Shadowed Souls Part 5
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: Penultimate part of the 6-part Shadowed Souls story in 'The Blood Will Tell' series.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

**Chapter 1 **

"Illyria?" Wesley questioned, approaching the demon, which turned immediately to regard him.

"That Slayer is not one of ours." Illyria commented as it stepped back inside their suite, followed by Wesley who closed the door and locked it. "She did not come with the Slayer-Queen to this place from the Hellmouth."

"No." Wesley admitted cautiously. "She was not created by Willow last year."

"How did she come to be, if the Slayer-Queen's Mahju did not bring her forth?"

"Justine is successor to Fallon Mady. She lives here in LA. I know her from when…I met her last year." Wesley answered, feeling his scar itch – a psychosomatic response if ever there was one.

"Last year…" Illyria stopped and tilted its head over to one side so its ear was almost touching its shoulder as it looked at Wesley, a gesture characteristic of the demon when it was absorbing some new knowledge and accessing Fred's memory cortex to establish context. "The female…Justine…fought with you against the _haikahwa'ah_ you call Jasmine?"

"No. She was involved in…another Angel Investigations case." Wesley answered before her comment registered - "Wait, you know what Jasmine really was?"

Illyria shrugged. "She was not rare amongst her kind. Many of the haikahwa'ah were determined to end the endless wars and slaughters that raged across so many, many dimensions and realities. The insectoid race of Tu'iq'Nhva were known for their ferocity and internecine wars, that is why she picked them to experiment upon before she came to your world hidden in the body of your vampire-king's Visionary love…"

_Of course - if Jasmine could pull off her plan with a species as ferocious and violent as the Two-eek-whatevers, she could be confident of pulling it off with much less vicious species – relatively speaking – like ours –_

"…She turned them from war to peace in worship of her, the price was only the flesh of a dozen or so Tu'iq'Nhva a year." Illyria finished.

"Yes, I saw their world. Terrible place," murmured Wesley as he went and poured himself a glass of the rather good whisky Spike had apparently left at some point, "all that calm – what it needed was a good bloodbath to liven the planet up."

Illyria was suddenly much closer than it had been, its expression clearly showing a lack of appreciation for his sarcasm. "It was not truth. They were not truly changed, merely enslaved. She took away their will so they had none of their own, so how could their peace be anything but a hollow sham?"

"That's…an enlightened view." _Considering what __**you**__ are_. "Are you saying that if given the opportunity you _wouldn't _have simply chosen to have entire worlds devotedly worshipping you, unencumbered by that pesky _free will_ thing?" Wesley challenged somewhat recklessly.

"I did have opportunity. It was unnecessary. I am _Illyria_. I was beloved without need to resort to enslavement to obtain the devotion of my worshippers." Illyria responded without arrogance, simply stating the facts. "Though I did not fully understand, only he did."

"He?"

"The being that made _your_ kind. We paid no heed when he made the human plague. Weak and unshelled, soft and wormlike you were, crawling blind across our world, feeble and easy prey. He always had a fondness for this dimension, this world above any others, yet it was the least of the wonders he made, the glorious beauty he forged in the stars."

"How could…He…It…have any real power before having any worshippers? Without worshippers, a god is nothing?"

Illyria laughed out loud – a startling and unnerving visual. "Nothing? What conceit your kind has, so pitiful yet so arrogant. Any creature is born with as much or as little power as is natural for its species and _nothing_ can take that away – nor increase it. His – It's – power was beyond the comprehension of all but even a few of the Old Ones, and your regard or lack of it meaningless to him."

The idea that Illyria had met, had been casually acquainted, in fact, with God-capital-G, was a notion that Wesley had to take a moment to assimilate.

The demon explained, "But he realised, where as we did not, that his might would be made even greater by those who _chose_ to worship him, instead of subjugation or…"

"Brainwashing?" Wesley suggested, as Illyria seemed to grope for a suitable word in the limited modern English.

"Yes, that is appropriate…brainwashing, like Jasmine chose to do. So he forged the human plague…and allowed them to worship him or not as they chose."

"Not an approach favoured by you and the other Old Ones, I take it." Wesley murmured, talking another gulp of his whiskey.

Illyria frowned. "Folly, to our kind, we destroyed anything that was not utterly ours, served nothing but our own ambition. We warred and conquered and had worlds at our feet as we did before, it mattered not to us that the vermin spread across the worlds or his ridiculous largesse to his creation – those that genuflected to him he blessed, but even those that would not, He allowed to feel the sun and rain, to plant grass and eat vegetation. Then there came a day when, suddenly, we were few and they were many. Your kind crawled into all the places where we strode as gods to gods and pushed us out. They gathered together against the Old Ones and though we dashed to pieces hundreds in a single stroke, there were thousands and hundreds of thousands still there. They cried out in a single voice from a billion throats to him and he gave them his power. The lesser ones amongst us were destroyed, and we who reigned supreme banished to sleep forever in the Deeper Well."

"Except for you." pointed out Wesley. "Let's just hope no _more _of your fellow Old Ones were _also_ smart enough to rig an escape plan."

Illyria narrowed its eyes at him, "Why are you hostile? You have been angry ever since you returned from the Ghost Roads. It is in your posture and your eyes and your voice. Why do you risk provoking me, who could kill you with a single blow? You are trying to distract me from the Slayer who is not part of the Slayer-Queen's group."

"My, you are a lot brighter than most demons." Wesley allowed full-on sarcasm to infuse his voice. "As a matter of fact, yes, I am angry. It's never easy to travel the Ghost Roads at the best of times. Not only did I have to relive in graphic detail some very unhappy memories, I had to watch in Technicolor and Surround-Sound my nightmares play out as if they'd come true and I was shown how I inadvertently committed the greatest Watcher crime of all – _I harmed my Slayer_. I told her things that weren't true, that I didn't even _believe_, and now those things are haunting her mind and possibly putting her unborn child at risk. As for Justine Bloody Cooper, she's a twisted, sadistic bitch who helped her boss trick me into betraying Angel, after which, she slit my throat and left me to bleed to death on the sidewalk, and now she wants me to be her Watcher. In short, I'm not in the best place right now, and all I wanted was to have a quiet night's rest with Fred, instead of which, I get up here and for some reason find I'm babysitting the Psycho-Smurf."

Illyria's eyes flashed. "I am here because the Fred-human is distressed. She is upset over something I do not understand, and she is unnerved. All these Slayers and other humans make her nervous. She does not feel safe. You are her mate, it is your task to protect her, but you are being angry and frightening, so I must protect her. I will not leave until Fred feels safe again."

"Fine. You do that." Wesley turned and made to leave.

"Where do you go?"

"Somewhere where I can get some bloody peace and quiet. Being nagged by a hell-demon is not how I envisaged spending the night."

"I do not permit you to go."

"And I do not give a damn what you permit..." Wesley snarled, driven beyond prudence as he reached for the door.

He gasped as Illyria grabbed his forearm in a crushing grip, and he instinctively tried to push the demon away, but the chitin-like armour rendered Illyria virtually impervious. Wesley abruptly realised just how dangerous the moment was, since Illyria, if angry, was quite capable of killing him without actually meaning to do so.

Hissing through its teeth, the crystalline blue eyes glowing with anger, Illyria caught his other arm, it's grip increasing with an exponential strength that was on the verge of crushing Wesley's bones.

Incredibly, it was Angel's bite-mark that broke the confrontation - when Wesley's head arched back exposing his neck when he was unable to prevent himself crying out in pain against it's grip.

Illyria released one of his arms, raising its fingers to brush against the bite marks. "The vampire Angel bit you…" It frowned as it sensed the other mystically healed bite marks, checking the other side of his neck where Spike customarily fed. "The vampires have bitten you before, yet they have not killed you. What is this?"

"Let me go…" Wesley grated out. "Illyria, release me."

Pushing him away from the door back into the room proper, Illyria demanded, "What is this, that you let the vampires bite you?"

"It was necessary." Wesley rubbed his arms, wincing at the pins and needles as circulation and pinched nerve endings began to come back.

Spotting the bedside clock's LED display that said 12:04, Wesley gave the edited highlights in the hope of being able to wrap things up quickly. "I allowed Spike to feed because he was in danger from an enemy when he tried to hunt, and we needed him to fight on our side. As for Angel, there is an enemy in Wolfram & Hart – someone is poisoning Angel's flask of blood with Luaric. We don't know who it is yet, so we're pretending Angel still has that blood, but I feed him…Fred knows this."

Illyria's eyes went slightly vacant as the demon reached into its central cortex to access Fred's memories of events. "Yes, she remembers…you and your leader had a great confrontation in your lair because you allowed the blond vampire to shelter in your lair and feed from you. Your leader was jealous over this."

"No kidding." Wesley agreed before he could censure himself. "You must keep it a secret, Illyria. The poisoner doesn't know we're onto him, and if he finds out Angel is no longer being dosed with his Luaric-contaminated blood, we may never catch him, so nobody must know that I feed Angel and Spike."

"They cause you no harm?" Illyria pressed.

"None."

Starting to nod its head in reluctant acquiescence, Illyria paused suddenly. "But not the female."

"Eh?"

"The vampiress." Illyria clarified, moving closer again and gently stroking Wesley's injured neck with its fingers, over the bite marks and the faded scar left by Justine. "I have accessed Fred's memories of Angelus, last year. It is only their souls that keep the two males from killing you, but the female vampire has no soul. Besides, she is very pretty, and Fred will not have that blond strumpet biting you."

His lips twitching involuntarily as Illyria revealed so openly what Fred would never have said, Wesley hastily agreed, "No, no, no blond strumpet, absolutely not."

"And this Slayer…Justine Bloody Cooper." Illyria frowned. "She tried to kill you? I will destroy her."

"No!" Wesley snapped with more force than he intended, causing Illyria's stance to stiffen with renewed aggression. Wesley went on, "What Justine did…was bad…but she was following the orders of her leader, Holtz. He tricked many people into believing he was good, and that Angel was evil. Justine didn't know what was really going on. She thought she was doing the right thing."

There, half-truths to disguise outright lies. Wesley kept his face straight and his respiration steady as Illyria regarded him. While initially gulled, Justine hadn't been fooled for very long, and had known, deep down, what Holtz really was – the way she had followed Wesley after one of his meetings with Holtz had proven that she knew what was really going on. Unlike Aubrey and the others, she hadn't remained blind to Holtz's real agenda, but just like Rupert Giles and Robin Wood with regard to Spike, she had wilfully ignored the truth, for the simple reason that Justine hadn't cared.

Angel was a vampire, so therefore any atrocities perpetrated against him were justified in her view – and ditto those 'degenerates' who 'associated' with Angel. That was how she'd rationalised away 'murdering' Wesley Wyndham-Pryce while kidnapping, or re-kidnapping to be technically correct, Angel's son – Wesley certainly wasn't under any illusions that he'd been supposed to _survive_ her attack; the knife had been too sharp, the wound too deep and too severe, the attack too well aimed at his jugular. Wesley hadn't been supposed to survive to let Angel know who'd taken Connor and thus spoil Daniel Holtz's intended "dead-end" plan – Angel left with nothing but the body of his traitorous lieutenant exsanguinated on a suburban sidewalk by persons unknown with his baby son vanished into thin air – no clues, no leads, no suspects.

During those weeks of taking Justine out in the boat searching for Angel's tomb on the seabed, nothing had changed her embittered, fanatic worldview, despite how she and her fellows had been abandoned utterly by Holtz the instant they were of no more use. It was probably a classic example of bitter irony that only now Justine had become a vampire slayer was she gradually losing the blinkers she'd donned upon the murder of her twin, forced increasingly to acknowledge not only that she'd been on the wrong side, but the good guys were led by a vampire.

"If that it what you wish…" Illyria said reluctantly.

"Yes." Wesley reinforced and mustered up a smile. "It's late, we should go to bed."

Performing his ablutions as quickly as possible and wincing as he came back out to see that it was nearly one o'clock in the morning, Wesley climbed into the huge old bed where Illyria already lay, staring at the ceiling where the faint lines of old ceiling carvings could be seen. Wesley had a sneaking suspicion that this had once been one of the hotel's honeymoon suites, for some of the faint lines seemed to detail risqué decorations. Almost as if it were reading his mind, Illyria stretched out an arm, and placed it's hand on his chest, as if wondering anew at the warm softness of his human skin…Wesley went still – this action usually heralded Illyria's decision to mate, and doing the beast with two-backs with an uninhibited, and still irritated, hell-demon in a hotel full of people with supernaturally enhanced hearing was not Wesley's idea of fun.

However, after a moment, Illyria merely moved next to him, drawing him close into the tight embrace that Wesley privately termed 'the body-lock of doom'. With vague surprise he realised that Illyria was feeling insecure, so Wesley consciously forced himself to relax and close the tiny gap Illyria had left between them, laying his head on its armoured breasts and closing his eyes…

_To be continued in Part 5, Chapter 2…_

© 2005 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

**Chapter 2**

Absolute silence.

Nobody spoke, nobody moved.

Angel glared and those gathered _en masse_ collectively shrank back.

Then finally one brave soul, his face a sort of pasty grey, raised one hand in the air. "Er…S-sir? What do you mean, exactly?"

"What do you mean, what do I mean?" responded Angel. "What I _said_. I'm giving everyone the day. Take a day off. Go to the beach. Go to the mall. Take your _spouse_ to a hotel room for the afternoon instead of your mistress or the pool boy. Take. The. Day. Off."

Assorted attorneys, counsellors, secretaries, lab technicians, security guards and so on exchanged perturbed glances. It was now eight-thirty in the morning. Wolfram & Hart's undead CEO had arrived at eight o'clock exactly with a large, predominantly young and pretty female entourage who had squeezed into his office like sardines into a can.

Angel had then ordered the entire staff to assemble in front of his office.

While extremely rare, this wasn't in itself unprecedented. More than one previous CEO had done the same; on those occasions, however, it had been for more unpleasant reasons. The CEO before Holland Manners, for example, back in the 1940s, had had a nasty habit of 'downsizing' to meet the staff budget by randomly raking the staff complement with a rifle. True, in the end this had backfired on him, no pun intended, when one of his pot-shots took out the firm's then star-performer, which had lost three valuable demon-clan contracts and nearly set off an Apocalypse a year early. Some of the old-timers claimed you could still hear his screams echoing on the spot where the floor had literally opened up underneath him and skeletal hands had dragged him down. Since those folk had been wily enough to avoid that giant lava-man thing that had seemed intent on wiping out most of Wolfram & Hart's employee roster last year, they were likely more right than wrong.

"What is it with you people? Go away!" Angel barked.

As if kick-started, baffled Wolfram & Hart employees surged out of the building hastily scrambling for cell-phones to call husbands, wives, mistresses, lovers, their children's school, rearrange appointments, cancel lunches and, in many cases, simply stand on the steps and look at each other in uncertain confusion as the day stretched out before them.

Inside, having watched them troop, almost reluctantly, out, Buffy raised her eyebrows at the other Slayers and said in a loud voice, "Oh for some of _their_ work ethic."

"Do you need to call Xander and let him know where to come?" Angel asked as most of the Slayers rolled their eyes in response.

"Willow took care of it." Buffy assured him.

A frown dinted his eyebrows at what he recognised as an evasion, especially as Angel caught the flicker of understanding that passed over Spike's face at her unusual answer, but then Spike clapped his hands together. "Right, _mes Capitans_! What's the plan? And, knowing the penchant both of you have for motivational oratory, preferably in five words or less, please?"

Angel and Buffy looked at each other and chorused, "Gear up."

Everyone got moving, people bearing assorted just-made-for-mayhem weaponry as they made preparations, even Andrew in his trench coat gripping a double-edged battleaxe, though he seemed to have trouble hefting it, while Angel, Buffy and company made Angel's office Command Central. They were able to make his already spacious office even more so when they slid back the glass doors to his private conference room at the opposite end of the office, spreading out blueprints of the building on the big table.

"Will', you and the techno-types beef up building security as much as you're able, then soup up the mystical security system?" Buffy asked.

"Sure. Anything special I should know about?" Willow asked Angel.

"Technologically, not really. Mystically…Watch out for the sub-basement because there's some kind of monster down there that the Senior Partners designed to specifically kill me as a sort of failsafe, so it getting loose…not good." Angel remembered.

"Isn't it kind of defeating the object if you know about it?" Faith pointed out.

"I didn't know about it – Lindsay MacDonald tried to activate it to destroy me." Angel explained. "I managed to stop it…"

"Couldn't have been that ferocious then?" Queried Robin Wood somewhat tartly, his attitude since meeting Angel tending to swing back and forth between suspicion and wary acceptance on a regular basis.

"It was…but I was very angry at that point, which helped." Angel shrugged. "Lindsay had tricked Spike into trying to kill Cordy at the time, while he sneaked down to set it loose…"

"He was really channelling Angelus, let me tell you." Spike commented.

"Our biggest danger is Rutherford Sirk." Wesley announced loudly, moving so the acoustics carried his words easily. "Now we've blown their cover, the Oligarchs have nothing to lose by abandoning the skulking and coming for a full-frontal confrontation. Angel and I can testify to their skill at teleporting, so expect them to quite literally drop in on us. Also, the Old Guard Watchers were sat outside the Hyperion last night in vans with parabolic mikes, and they don't deem us either worthy or capable of taking out Rutherford Sirk, so expect them to gatecrash our little soiree sooner rather than later as well."

"Damn, and I forgot to order catering." quipped Faith.

"How do you know about the Old Watchers being in town?" Giles took of his spectacles and polished them, regarding the younger ex-Watcher quizzically, since Wesley had been on the Ghost Roads with Angel at the time.

"The Slayer Justine Bloody Cooper." Illyria intoned suddenly from where she was standing in Angel's office examining the many mystical _object d'art_ he had displayed.

"Say who?" Buffy frowned.

"She was Called when Fallon Mady died," Wesley informed them curtly, "she's LA based and already has a lot of the training and knowledge a Slayer requires. She's not comfortable with the Slayers _en masse_, but she was keeping watch last night."

"You're sure she's okay without a Watcher?" Giles enquired.

"She wishes Wesley to be her Watcher." Illyria put in before he could respond.

"Really?" Faith folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at this.

"No." Wesley glared at Illyria, trying to telepathically will the demon to shut up. "Just a joke, she was trying to get a rise out of me."

"You know her well enough to be exchanging witty banter and she was only Called three weeks ago?" Faith didn't appear particularly impressed.

"He has known her for a year as time in this dimension is measured." Illyria didn't understand its mate's glare and didn't particularly care anyway; Justine Cooper had tried to kill its mate and it was not feeling particularly benevolent. "She was the servant of an evil creature called Holtz, and she cut my mate's throat at her master's bidding and left him to die."

"What?"/ "Her?" / "Who?"/ "When did this happen?"/"That woman on the boat?" Team Angel and the Scooby Gang erupted at all once, the last exclamation coming from Angel.

Putting his fingers between his lips, Wesley gave a piercing whistle that brought immediate silence. "_Enough!_ Yes, yes, yes and yes. Right now Justine and her macabre sense of humour is not my concern. Rutherford Sirk is who we need to be focussing on, in case you've forgotten the evil group of sorcerers trying to suck dry the Slayers?"

Into the abashed silence, Wesley continued, "Sirk certainly worked at Wolfram & Hart long enough to know how to circumvent both the technological security system and the mystical warning devices, and to be aware of more than one sneaky secret way in. Plus, there's no telling what booby traps he and Eve had time to put in place while Angel and Spike were squabbling over that ridiculous _fake_ Cup of Perpetual Torment and leaving this building wide open and unprotected."

"Hey! You weren't here either!" Spike protested.

"I was recovering from having murdered my father, not having a juvenile squabble with my brother." Wesley retorted.

"You murdered…but I saw him in London last month…" Giles began to look alarmed.

"It turned out not to be him, but an evil cyborg –" Wesley managed to explain through gritted teeth, fighting down the urge to just scream.

"_Ah_, say no more." Willow chimed in sagely. "We get it. Robots are never good…"

"Ted, April, your dad…" Buffy commiserated.

"For some reason they all go Terminator." Willow shook her head and ticked off on her fingers: "So - there's the monster in the basement, which is so cliché by the way, plus Rutherford Sirk's probable booby traps and his ability to weasel around most of the building's security, plus an invasion by the Grumpy Old Watchers to cater for. Anything else, before I get to working my witchy way?"

"Oo-!" Spike suddenly snapped his fingers, "The car! Listen, I know it's not likely, but if we do have to do a runner from here at a fast clip, don't anybody take the Camaro. It's enchanted to take you straight to a hell-dimension. I'm talking psychopathic housewives with MP5s and way-too-good aim."

"Damn, the guns." Angel realised as Spike's words reminded him. "Miller, as military if you take point, - you, Gunn, Kennedy, Faith, Robin – and get Xander to do it when he gets here too – take a group of Slayers and pick a floor, then do a fingertip search for any artillery – guns, bazookas, grenades, rocket launchers, machine pistols, the works."

"You really think we'll need that sort of thing?" Andrew squeaked.

"It's not our need," Angel told them. "When Staavuz tried to kill Dawn, he sneaked in and used a gun he got from an office inside this building. It turns out that the mystical wards that stop that sort of weaponry from functioning won't work against any that are already inside this building at the time when the safeguard spell is cast. You can't bring an MP5 in without it being detected and it won't work if you do –"

"But if you've already got one here stashed in your desk drawer it won't be affected by the warding spell?" Buffy finished. "What's that all about?"

"It's my _favourite_ security system design _flaw_!"

Heads snapped around and hands dropped to weapons. Two young, beautiful women, one a brunette with bright scarlet lipstick and a more slender, blondish haired one, had just entered through the door from the stairwell, holding lightly but firmly between them one Xander Harris, or rather sultry brunette was – the gentle-looking blonde woman's expression was a mixture of trepidation and embarrassment, particularly as Xander looked remarkably relaxed about his captive state.

The scarlet-lipped brunette continued on, "They all make that mistake. Ring the goodies with as many nasties as they can think of, but once you're where you want to be, a lot of security systems assume you have every right to be there."

"Gwen? Nina?" Angel looked at the two women.

"Xander!" Buffy liberated Mr Pointy from her waist sash as Willow's hands began to glow warningly.

"Whoa, Slayer-Queen. Just providing an escort for the visitor. No hard feelings?" Gwen addressed Xander cheerily, stepping back and raising her hands in the universal sign of surrender.

"The Xan-Man bears no grudges." His eye-patch at a rakish angle, Xander strolled from between them over to Buffy and Willow, looking surprisingly mature and sleek-yet-raffish in his single-breasted navy-blue suit, with his white shirt undone a couple of buttons at the neck and his tie loosened just enough for the visual to be 'masculine but cute' rather than 'untidy scruffy bum'.

"Why are you here?" Angel demanded of the two women.

"We were just going to drop by and take a break from the retail therapy session," Gwen shrugged, "then we found your boy wandering around the underground parking garage because none of the elevators work –"

"Oops." Willow grimaced and scurried over to Harmony's desk, commandeering the PC and tapping keys.

" – and he filled us in on the crisis. We're here to help."

"Gwen," Charles Gunn protested, "this could get fatal real fast."

"What, you want a girlfriend who just stands in a corner and swoons?" challenged Gwen, folding her arms across her chest, arms which were covered by white silk elbow length evening gloves.

"Girlfriend?" Angel looked at Gunn.

"Your mate is the female that killed you?" Illyria interposed yet again, its stance shifting slightly in the manner that most had come to recognise as characteristic of it accessing Fred Burkle's memories.

"That was an accident." Shot back Gunn. "Besides, she unintentionally electrocuted me for all of two minutes, that doesn't even rate on the weird scale around here, or am I wrong?" he challenged, throwing out his arms to encompass the building and those gathered in it.

"I'm guessing that you have secret super powers?" Buffy hazarded as she addressed the beautiful brunette.

"I'm electrically supercharged," Gwen shrugged. "Literally. Born like it. I get hit by lightening a dozen times a year, can fry any electric circuit with a single touch." She waggled her silk-covered hands in the air. "You should have seen my family go through toasters…and TVs, stereos, cars, kettles, computers…"

"But if you can't touch anything then how –" Giles stopped as he began to address this to Gunn, then shook his head. "I did not say those words aloud."

"Too late, we all went to the scary visual place." Dawn murmured in a stage whisper.

"I couldn't." Gwen admitted. "At least not without electrocuting them to death. But last year I persuaded Gunn – "

" - tricked Gunn -" corrected the man in question, folding his arms and glaring at his lover.

"To help me acquire –"

"- steal -" Gunn interposed again.

"A cute little gizmo, sort of like nanotechnology." Gwen pulled up her skimpy top to reveal what looked like a small motherboard implanted in the outer layer of her skin above her belly button (which had a blue jewel in it), startlingly reminiscent of the Buffybot. "When this is in, it lowers my electricity down to barely felt static, kind of like a circuit breaker. When I touch someone all you'd feel would be a slight warm tingle, but - I take it out and I turn back into "One-touch-is-death" girl."

"Cool. Welcome to the gang." Buffy told her cheerfully before raising an eyebrow at the other woman who had to be 'Nina'.

"I can fight normally pretty good. I've got a black belt now." Nina put in hesitantly. "I could only really…fight like you…at a full moon."

"Ah, I thought I recognised a certain lupine charm." Xander nodded sagely.

"You can't control…?" Willow said quietly.

"No…not yet." Nina looked shyly at Angel. "I was attacked one night. Angel stopped me from getting killed but not before I'd been bitten…I have a sister and a niece who don't know about…this, so I have a nice cage at Wolfram & Hart." She smiled at Angel. "We had our first date there when I was a werewolf and you'd been changed into that puppet."

"Puppet?" repeated Buffy, raising both eyebrows.

"He was so cute!" burbled Harmony. "He had these tiny felt hands and even that brow ridge and his little felt nose was detachable – "

"Harmony!" Angel's near-yell had her closing her mouth with a sharp clack and had everyone else fixing their gazes solemnly on the floor, though Buffy, Willow and Xander spoilt this by sniggering in unison.

"All right, let's get cracking, shall we?" Wesley brought them back on track crisply. "Who knows how long we've got before its raining bad guys."

Still glaring at Harmony who scurried away, Angel said, "I'll call the Groosalug, get him over here. There's never any harm in having as many unconquerable warriors as you can get."

"Oh, wait!" Exclaimed Willow looking up from where she was busy at her laptop on the conference table. "Could someone go get him?"

Team Angel exchanged baffled glances. "He seems to have mastered telecommunications quite admirably," Wesley commented, "I'm sure he'll make it."

Willow scowled at his slightly patronising tone. "Not the Groosalug, I'm thinking of Phantom Dennis."

"How d'you mean, Red?" Spike asked.

"This." Ferreting in the depths of the backpack she customarily carried, Willow brought out what looked like a very small ceramic vase with red squiggles on it. "After you told us about Phantom Dennis when we were here last, when we got back home I did some research. The problem most spooks have is that they're bound to the place of their death, which really stinks if what they need to break free of that trap is hidden in the wall of a house five miles away or something. Anyway, this is a Vessel of Troas. If the spirit can get someone to conjure their ectoplasmic matrix into the Vessel, they can go wherever the Vessel goes and manifest just like they could on their home turf, the Vessel's like a car for them."

"Don't tell me, eBay?" Wesley picked up the Vessel and examined it.

"Actually , but yeah – scary I know." Willow told him.

"So someone takes the Vessel to Co- to Gru's place, we can bring back Phantom Dennis to Wolfram & Hart and if necessary he can go all Exorcist on the bad guys?" Angel summarised.

"Yep." Willow nodded. "That's the idea. However, Dennis has to be willing to do it, and if he agrees, once the Vessel is back, it has to be guarded at all cost – if the Vessel is destroyed, Dennis's energy matrix will dissipate and he'll…well not die, obviously…but cease to exist."

"I'll do it." Lorne spoke up. "Right now I'm not useful unless you want rousing Wagnerian arias about Valkyries and buckets of blood. I'll go get Gru and Dennis."

"Okay." Angel agreed. "Be as fast as you can."

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 3…_

© 2005 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

**Chapter 3**

Willow got back to the security system, working in tandem with Fred, Illyria having retreated to allow Fred's monumental techno-genius neurons to do their 21st Century thing.

Gunn, accompanied by Gwen, took a group of Slayers around the floor they were currently on, starting from the farthest end and working 'back' towards Angel's office and the outer lobby/elevators. Wesley took his group to sweep the forensic and research labs and the least 'mystical' areas, along with Grey Miller and Nina Ash, who despite her unfailingly polite demeanour visibly relaxed alongside Miller as he was a 'normal' looking guy – clearly a non-supernatural being, and therefore a comforting companion and reassuring visual: a US soldier carrying a 'normal' gun, not some cheerfully homicidal alternate dimension über-hero who took everything literally, hefted a twice-blessed mystical super-sword like it was a tooth-pick and talked straight out of a 14th Century Mediaeval romance, et cetera. Thinking of Gru – yes, Lorne had discreetly made his exit to fetch him and Dennis.

He rapidly regretted his casual order to 'dump any guns in office behind my desk out of the way' as Slayers staggered back with armloads of lethal ordnance, everything from automatic and semi-automatic assault rifles, machine pistols, pump-action shotguns, handguns including .357 Magnums loaded with dum-dum bullets, hand grenades, and even a couple of portable shoulder-mount rocket launchers, besides all the standard swords, knives, daggers, battle-axes and maces. For a bunch of desk-warming evil lawyers, these people made your average LA street-gang/Mexican drug lord look like rank beginners. On top of that lot, there were all the mystical weapons the Slayers brought, carried with prudent paranoid care – small spheres that glowed bile-yellow warningly when handled and little test-tubes with strange blue liquid within them that nobody thought was Crème de Menthe or Blue Curaçao.

Angel made a mental note to offer Miller first dibs of all the firepower on behalf of Finn and The Initiative; might as well get something for the arsenal rather than just get rid of it. Since bullets would do nothing much except make him _very_ _angry_, Angel had never really been into firearms, although he supposed he should be thankful nobody had ever thought to try firing wooden bullets soaked in holy water or carved with religious sigils into a vampire's heart.

Or, more likely, had simply never been _successful_ in such an experiment? A chill skipped up his undead spine at that notion. For all Buffy Summers' individual innovations, the thought popped into Angel's head that perhaps it wasn't entirely a bad thing that everything from the Wolf, Ram and Hart through the Watchers Council to The Powers That Be were so traditionalist and hidebound in their thinking and actions. Super-hearing, smell and strength only helped any vampire so far; he would have been well and truly done for if Daniel Holtz, or Justine Cooper – or even _Connor_ – had been able to take him out from a thousand yards away with a sniper's rifle that fired sanctified wooden bullets!

And wasn't _that _a cheery thought to be thinking whilst stood in the heart of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart's lair?

With perfect timing, the elevator doors chimed open and Lorne stepped out, the green demon carefully carrying the Vessel of Troas. Alongside him was the perpetually perky Groosalug, whom he'd brought up to speed; Angel supposed that since Gru was an _unconquerable _champion, the concept of meeting anything he couldn't overcome was so incomprehensible the man simply never experienced anxiety, depression or self-doubt. Nice mindset if you could get it.

Angel hastened to open the safe in the wall behind his desk and Lorne carefully placed the rather small and insignificant looking vase inside, wrapping it in towels from the kitchen just to be safe to the point of paranoia, since as long as it was in the building, it being inside the safe had no effect on its abilities to help a spectre display its presence.

According to Gru, Dennis had been more than willing to help and anyway, after seventy years of being stuck inside that apartment, his attitude was that it was pretty much well worth the risk. Although he couldn't manifest himself as a visible apparition in the same manner that the Hyperion spooks had, Dennis demonstrated his usefulness in the poltergeist department when he levitated an MP5, AK47 and a .357 Magnum out of the growing pile on Angel's office floor and began to 'juggle' with them until Buffy asked him to stop.

"What about Wolfram & Hart…I mean aren't there any spooks in here who would _help_ us in return for us trying to free them from the mortal coil?" Giles enquired, as if suddenly remembering exactly where he was. "To be honest, I would have thought this place would have been packed to the rafters with the restless dead?"

"Er…that would be no…" Spike answered, "…They were all murdered."

"Well yes, I rather thought that was the point…" Giles began again.

"No, they were…_re-_murdered…when they were spooks," Spike explained. "Angel, I was a bit busy bein' tortured by Potty Pavayne when all the exposition went down - "

Obligingly, Angel filled in the explanation, "When Wolfram & Hart wanted to build their LA office they had deconsecrate the ground from the old Spanish Catholic Mission that used to be on this spot."

"Ahh," Giles nodded, taking off his spectacles and polishing them.

"And for those of us just joining you?" prompted Gwen sassily.

Angel shrugged, "So, they murdered a sorcerer named Matthias Pavayne, who was a sort of 17th Century Dr Josef Mengele prequel in these parts. They sliced, diced and scattered his blood and bones over the ground and Pavayne's spirit was trapped here."

"And the…_coup de 'but'_ is…?" Buffy asked.

Spike gave a low growl, "_But _- in his attempts to achieve immortality, Perverted Pavayne had learned a few tricks, and so to keep himself from being sucked into a hell-dimension he tossed the spirit of any _other_ subsequent ghost that became trapped here through the portal _instead_…"

"Which is why a place that should be an ectoplasmic sardine can is in fact room with a view." Giles nodded. "I see."

"Wolfram & Hart is built on the remains of a serial-killing psychopath?" Buffy rolled her eyes. "I can't even pretend to be surprised. Wait…Spike, when you were first here, _you_ were a ghost…"

"Pavayne tried, he failed…thanks to Fred Burkle, and we got him." Spike shrugged.

"The creature Pavayne was made flesh," Illyria spoke up suddenly, looking at the blond vampire, "but he captured the Fred-human and told Spike that he would slay her unless the vampire stopped. Spike yielded to save Fred-human and Angel vanquished him."

Spike looked embarrassed at this declaration. "Um, seemed like the thing to do."

Angel decided to take pity on his grandson but Gru beat him to it unintentionally by flatteringly asking Angel's permission to reconnoitre the building 'battle zone'. He'd never been inside Wolfram & Hart, and given the Oligarchs were sorcerers and the 'Old Guard Watchers' no slouches in the spell-casting department, his warrior training demanded he get a 'handle' on the terrain and potential bottle-necks and vantage points.

Angel tried not to glare at the way _certain people_ smirked at Gru's straightforward deference to the 'senior Champion of Light on site', instead pointing out that it was an excellent strategic idea and pointedly 'suggesting' that all the groups go out again and this time double-check other areas of the building so they knew the whole layout.

With too many faces bearing too many amused smiles, they all grouped up and set off again. Angel made another mental note – they really had to find a _real_ name for their old friend rather than simply shorten 'The Groosalug'. Although…_what _to pick was going to be a major point of contention, Angel acknowledged as he looked to where Gru, accompanied by Lorne, had acquired his own little band of murderous minxes to lead. Gru immediately delighted them as he declared that they should visit the most dangerous areas of the building first – like the necromancy floor, for instance.

Or rather, Lorne did his usual 'leading the team without appearing to' deal, as their favourite jolly green go-to-guy rode herd on Gru and their group of Slayers, doing his best to curb their enthusiasm as the Slayers were flattering in their instant and keen in their welcome of Gru and his open, cheerful, 'me mighty warrior, me like to fight, let's find some fugly and thrash it' attitude.

As he watched them trot off with Lorne hiding winces and Gru happily explaining hair-raising sword-combat techniques to his zestily blood-thirsty little fan club (_then you half twist and pull and they're disembowelled_), it suddenly occurred to Angel just how complicated, and messy, and decades-long in the outworking, was the job Buffy Summers had set for herself in choosing to be _the_ Queen of the Slayers, the matriarch teaching and training the following generations so they could be Heroes, but without the Tragic and Tortured prefixes.

Because whilst Faith might be the first – well technically second – Slayer mom, she certainly wouldn't be the last, an event that was likely to happen much sooner rather than later. Mother Nature cared only about the survival of the species, and Slayers, generally speaking, were the Big Four of excellent breeding stock: young, healthy, active, intelligent – in short, their 50 percent of the DNA required to produce another human being was prime _filet mignon _or top-karat white diamond, depending on your comparison of choice.

In addition to the big four, most Slayers also tended to have physically attractive bodies _and _pretty looks, and their Slayer super-powers _also_ gave them enhanced senses and enhanced 'drives' - including libido. Just like Faith seemed to be doing, a Slayer could remain quite active during pregnancy and have a quick labour – because of Darla's pregnancy with Connor, Angel had learned that most modern 'two-day-labour' nightmares in hospitals were caused by the fact that modern Western women were relatively sedentary and unfit compared to previous generations, where a young, healthy woman often had a labour lasting less than thirty minutes in some cases and carried right on with whatever they were doing.

Just one Slayer could therefore quite likely have several children without losing her figure, her looks, or being away from her kicking-demon-ass duties for a great length of time. Especially if that 'dream mom package' was teamed up with the other 50 percent of the child's DNA coming from a 'dream dad package' of a father unflinchingly honest, innately honourable, unswervingly loyal, unfailingly brave, plus romantic, respectful, cute, easy on the feminine eye, noble, heroic, manly and generally impossible to dislike – that was before you added in the bonus points of being Warrior-King of Pylea (in exile), in short, the original Prince Charming.

Not to mention _also_ likewise a champion of light, with enhanced powers, enhanced senses and enhanced 'appetites'. Step forward ye Unconquerable Hero! Lorne, who spent an increasing amount of time at Cordy's – at Gru's, now - apartment with Phantom Dennis, had let slip how Dennis had let on that Gru got more horizontal action in a week than the entire male population of the rest of the world had managed in a century – quite simply due to his inability to grasp the concept of refusing _any_ request made by a member of the 'fairer sex' and being utterly oblivious to any idea of 'sexual politics'; Gru treated every female he met as if she were a princess who'd merely forgotten to don her crown before going out the palace doors. Dennis had conveyed to Lorne that Gru had nearly worn the bed in the apartment out; the ghost feared its imminent collapse daily – or nightly. Even those men he (inadvertently) cuckolded couldn't stay angry after being near him for more than a minute; Gru was a minor celebrity in LA, with man-crushing males queuing to buy him 'good ale and hearty man-snacks' and the female of the species – of _most_ species – swooning at his feet in panting adoration. It merely was a question of which, or more probably _how many_, of this nubile contingent of vibrant, vivacious, libidinous Slayers that Gru would get pregnant.

Suddenly, Angel felt quite cheerful about being, more or less, bound to LA for the foreseeable future while Buffy and Co., remained in Sunnydale, or as it would one day sooner rather than later end up being: Sunnyday-care from hell. Turning back into his office, he caught Buffy's eyes as she prepared to head off again with her group, and had he been human, he would have flushed at being caught out. But her dry look was more amused than offended and clearly said, _I'm way ahead of you on that thought-train, buddy_. Slightly behind her sister, Dawn actually gave him a quick wink, which was outrageous! She was far too young to be able to follow his train of thought…although, maybe he was simply too old!

"Back in a few, _gran'pa_," Spike jibed, showing that as usual he had been following Angel's thought processes effortlessly, and headed off with Harmony, who was as oblivious as ever, and Xander, whose own expression was similarly and suspiciously amused.

How had he suddenly become an open book to everyone? He was _Angel; _as Spike was too fond of pointing out, tall, dark and brooding was his MO. He glared in the general direction of everyone, but this didn't have much impact as most had gone already and the others didn't see it as they mostly had their backs to his office. Faith, heading off to the lower floors and basements with Robin and Kennedy and her team, merely raised her eyebrows with sardonic amusement and a look that said, essentially, _nice try but way too late to make the save_.

Gathering his shredded dignity around him, Angel went back into his office.

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 4_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

Chapter 4

Eventually however, everyone had fully reconnoitred, all the preparations were prepared and everyone settled in for the hard part – waiting.

Buffy fiddled with the various ornaments and knick-knacks situated around Angel's office while he sat at his desk, swivelling the chair slightly from side-to-side. Spike perched on the arm of the couch, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black-leather duster, or rather Nikki Wood's duster.

Harmony had let slip previously that when anything untoward happened, such as him getting machine gunned in the back while getting Lindsay McDonald out of Wolfram & Hart's penalty box dimension, Spike had had the duster magically restored to pristine condition – an expensive process. Robin Wood's face had darkened at this revelation, but he hadn't pursued the matter. Later on, Angel had broached the subject again, explaining that Spike had never been in the habit of taking trophies from his victims and that the duster therefore had great meaning to Spike. Wood had harshly retorted that his mother had had great meaning to him, a response Angel couldn't top.

At the far end of Angel's office, Willow did her thing with her laptop at the conference table with Kennedy sitting beside her, absently polishing a kind of hooked spear-thing, while in the outer lobby area Wesley and Giles sat conversing quietly, with Andrew silently listening in rapt absorption. Most of the others sat around and fiddled with their weaponry and watched Illyria, whom Fred had asked to come forward for the brutal fight part, with fascination as the hell-demon stood staring into space, apparently deep in thought. Either that or she was in silent conversation with the nearby planter.

"Could Willow…does she know where Oz went…to get his wolf side under control?" Angel asked Buffy quietly as she passed by his desk for the umpteenth time; he knew what she was feeling, their type always did much better smashing hell out of something than sitting around waiting.

"Absolutely." Buffy reassured him. "Glad to help…Nina's really nice."

"Yeah…she is." Angel shifted uncomfortably. "We…we're…she…we…it's good, Buffy. I'm happy." He hesitated, then qualified, "Not blissfully happy of course…"

"I get it." Buffy smiled at him. "I'm glad – truly. It's good, we all needed to move on…" She looked sheepish and defiantly proud at the same time, "When Dawn and I were in Rome for a while, I had a thing with a guy-"

"Yeah, only The Immortal for pity's sake, what is it with you and evil blokes." Spike chimed in, giving lie to the appearance he wasn't listening.

"The Imm- ? How do you two know about that?" Buffy folded her arms across her torso and looked from one to the other as they belatedly refused to meet her gaze.

The Slayer's eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute, you both came to Rome, didn't you? The pair of you came to Rome…to what, to save me? …I don't believe this!"

Unconsciously she placed her hands on her hips and glared at them like an exasperated mother – Joyce Summers reincarnated. "What were you _thinking_?"

"That you were in danger!" protested Angel defensively. "The Immortal was an enemy of ours, back in the day. We got a phone call saying you were dating him, what did you expect us do?"

"To get on with your lives like I was getting on with mine?" Buffy retorted. "You guys were spying on me in Rome…I didn't see you…?"

"We couldn't track you down. We could only find Watcher wannabe Andrew…" Spike snapped derisively, "Which was when we found out that you were with the big poof voluntarily and didn't want rescuing! What were you thinking?"

"Of enjoying myself!" Buffy declared, before she relaxed her aggressive stance with visible willpower. "Look…it was a summer romance…he was smart and funny and made me feel special…I don't know…he had…something…"

"Yeah, herpes probably," muttered Spike.

Buffy sucked in a harsh breath but there was a tiny sound from the doorway, clearly audible to a Slayer and two vampires with super-hearing.

Nina Ash stood there, looking excruciatingly embarrassed and pink-cheeked. "Just wanted to let you…know...Um…I'll go…be somewhere else."

"Nina…" Angel straightened in his chair but she'd already fled. "Damn. I've got to talk to her…"

"Sit. Stay." ordered Buffy. "Will', can you find me the phone number of those monks Oz –"

"Here." Willow made a gesture and a scrap of paper appeared in mid-air right in front of Buffy so she could snag it. "Go fix Tweedledee and Tweedledum's goof up."

"Hey…" started Spike.

"Do you want to be a toad?" Willow addressed this question to the room in general and both vampires wisely subsided.

Buffy stalked out of Angel's office and without even looking up from the paperwork he'd taken out of his briefcase and had spread on one of the low coffee tables, Xander Harris merely pointed up the staircase on the right with the pen he was holding in one hand. Everyone else continued to evince intense interest in the plotted plants and/or the décor and tactfully pretended they were deaf and blind. One of the problems of an 'open plan' office layout was that sound really carried.

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 5_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

Chapter 5

Moving swiftly up the steps, Buffy found Nina almost immediately in the kitchen, making a hash of making a cup of coffee. The woman blushed and sat down at one of the tables, staring at the cup as if held all the universe's secrets and not meeting the Slayer's eyes.

"Hi!" Buffy sat down beside Nina and held out the bit of paper. "Take this. Our werewolf friend Oz used these people and he can control his change now."

"Really?" Nina took the paper and risked a darting glance at Buffy. "Thank you. Is Oz here with you…?"

"No. He was kind of our roving agent In Africa. He helps out a lot when his band isn't touring."

"He's a musician?" Nina's face showed that 'werewolf' and 'musician' weren't computing.

"He's the guitarist for _Dingoes Ate My Baby -_"

"With Devon MacLeish, their lead singer?" Nina looked both interested and fascinated. "I was a UCLA Art Major and I worked on their last album cover. The band came into the workshop when we were brainstorming ideas. They seemed very together and focussed, not your usual flaky rock band wannabe types…there was one of them…not very tall, skinny, spiky ginger hair…the only one who never said a word…?"

"Oz," Buffy confirmed the implied identification. "Daniel Osborne, though I doubt even he remembers what they named him at the font by now…and all five of them are Sunnydale High Alumni – Class of '99."

Nina nodded, not needing any further explanation to grasp that Buffy Summers' Sunnydale High peers – alive, dead or otherwise – had something a little _extra _about them.

"Oz is currently wrapping up his last job helping Mr Zubuto – a Watcher - with some of the younger Slayers, the minors. Usually he sort of roves around finding useful artefacts and ancient texts that he sends us – he's going to go to The Initiative in South America with Grey Miller and Xander next month on a…project we're working together on. He's a good guy. Mystifying but good."

"And he really can control the grrr arrgh?" Nina asked with a hint of desperation.

"Totally…though…Oz is what Zen aspires to be." Buffy acknowledged. "But I'm sure you'll do fine."

"I hope so. It's just so hard, with my family…my sister, Gill, and her daughter Amanda are the only family I have now and she gets a bit antsy – full on big sister bossiness." Nina rolled her eyes. "She has no idea about any of this…she's really pleased I'm dating the CEO of Wolfram & Hart and keeps wanting me to bring Angel to dinner…I mean…" Nina laughed hesitantly, "Werewolf and vampire…I guess the ultimate lame cliché, huh?"

"No way," Buffy said firmly, recognising a total absence of self-esteem when she saw it. Nina Ash was Willow Rosenberg during the first year that Buffy had lived in Sunnydale. "Do you like chocolate?"

"Uh, sure?"

"Then it's a date. When we've kicked Oligarchy butt, I'll take you for coffee and naughty chocolaty goodness at this place I know on the Drive and we can talk about Angel behind his back."

Nina giggled despite herself, then sobered and looked at Buffy shyly. "Are you really okay with it…? I mean you're a legend…I've heard so much about you…" Nina looked at her hands, "…about you and Angel…you and Spike…you and Angel and Spike…"

"I'm. Okay. With. It." Buffy enunciated, placing her own hand over Nina's nervously fiddling ones. "I'll admit there is an inner moppet, deep down, that's stamping her foot, but like Cordelia once told me, "'Spank your inner moppet and get over it.'"

"Yeah…Cordy…he loved…" Nina trailed off.

Buffy stiffened her spine, seeing Nina heading straight for some major vacation time in I'm-Not-Worthy-Ville. "I know, and that's good too. Did you know Cordelia?"

"No…I mean…she was in a coma and then she died…they all talk about her as if she was amazing…"

"She was. Sunnydale born and bred, like Willow and Xander and Oz," Buffy smiled, "and they are a rare and special breed. Cordelia was a very special person, and one of her talents was that she knew how to deal. She didn't wallow in what-might-have-been or if-only and I learned from her example. Wherever or whatever Cordelia is now, trust me, she's trying to apply a stylish designer shoe – nothing less than Choo or Laboutin or Blahnik - to your butt and yelling, "'Go for it already!'"

"You really think?"

"I know." Buffy corrected. "This is right for you, Nina, and Angel. Now is your time. Angel and I had ours and it was right…for then. Angel and I can't –"

"I know." Nina blurted and then flushed scarlet, instinctively lowering her voice, "It's why Wes' and everyone are nervous now they know we – you know. We can have good sex, but not great sex 'cause then bye-bye soul, hello über-evil."

Buffy laughed aloud, then it was her turn to sober up. "Nina, more importantly I don't want to because…well, it's like I'm cookie dough…"

"Cookie dough?"

"Er…on second thoughts, forget cookie dough, I'm not going through it again. Look, Nina…Angel and I, and Spike and I…I could never choose - and I will not choose; if the world would end unless I made a choice then…sorry, but the planet would go 'boom'. What they mean to me…I can't put into words. Angel and Spike are incredible individuals and they are each so precious to me…"

"I like Spike." Nina assured Buffy. "He is funny – and very useful for when Angel gets all pompous." Nina confided. "I can see how you…"

"In many ways they're apples and oranges, but in many ways they're peas in a pod." Buffy told her. "With Angel…Do you know much about the Slayer?"

"Bits here and there; until I was bitten, I'd have dismissed anything about the supernatural as nonsense and too many party drugs." Nina admitted.

"You and me both…" Buffy told her dryly. "But…when I was Called to be the Slayer I was...sixteen."

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 6_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

Chapter 6

Noble or not, there was a tiny part of Buffy that was piquantly satisfied at the way Nina's jaw dropped and her eyes went saucer-wide.

"_Sixteen?_" Nina finally blurted out, finding her voice, looking shocked – and worried, _for _Buffy.

Buffy's better nature decided she liked this girl, regardless of how long her relationship with Angel lasted, or didn't. "Yes – and I had _no idea_ that it was coming any more than you knew you were going to be bitten by a werewolf; I wasn't just the rank outsider in the horse race, I wasn't even in the running."

"But, I mean…you all seem so organised with Watchers and Councils and stuff?"

Buffy made a mocking sound in her throat. "Hah. Into every generation there is born the Chosen One, she alone will have the power – or at least, until I flushed the rules down the pan and started making my own. There is a lineage of Slayers going back…before History began. But as well as each Slayer, into every generation are born lots of other girls who are what they call _Potentials_. Each one could be the next Slayer when the current one dies."

"And there's no way to tell _which_ one of these Potential girls it will be?" Nina guessed shrewdly.

"Not at all. You see, in a lot of cultures, including some here in the USA that aren't mainstream society, the Potentials are identified very young and raised by their Watcher tutors, away from their parents and siblings, kind of like how little kids become warrior-monks or nuns or whatever." Buffy explained. "But the Watchers couldn't watch every Potential forever. They just couldn't keep track of all the Potentials who just never went beyond a tendency towards vivid nightmares and enjoying unusually sharp reflexes, never mind all the _descendents_ of each of those unrealised Potentials."

"Descendents?" Nina picked up the emphasis. "I guess…I suppose if you look at it mathematically…"

"Do, that's pretty much how it works; Willow could give you the stats – Willow would _love _to show you the stats," Buffy quipped fondly. "Back before the 1970s, large families were very common; in the UK a Potential who married in 1914 had 24 children with her husband."

"Twenty-four children? You're kidding – "

"Ah, statistically verified by Rupert Giles, _Librarian_." Buffy countered. "An extreme example, but a couple having eight to eighteen kids wasn't uncommon. Basically, any female descendent of any Potential could be a Slayer through any line including the daughters of sons just as much as the daughters of daughters. There's a woman, Solange, who's…helping us…against the Oligarchs. She revealed that Slayers are practically hereditary in her family," Buffy simplified for Nina's understanding. "Then, when Angel mentioned that Wesley and Spike are distantly related – their great-something-or-others were brothers – Xander realised that perhaps being a Potential is hereditary too and it might be a way to help us locate other Slayers created by Willow using the Scythe."

"The descendents of Potentials are more likely to become Slayers," Nina nodded, summarising to demonstrate she got it. "And you…?"

"There's a coven in Devon – the English County, not Oz's singer friend. They found some old Watcher archives that showed my mother's great-great-grandmother was a Potential who never became a Slayer – she emigrated from Britain here and settled in Maine in the 19th Century and had seven kids. The coven found the archive _two months ago_."

"And you've been a Slayer since you were sixteen. Horse, bolted, stable door." Nina drawled.

"Pretty much. The Slayer before me – a girl named India Cohen, was also American – Jewish American with a hefty side of Sioux or Lakota Indian ancestry, I think. But because Slayers often popped up on different continents, the 'smart money was that the next Slayer would be African or Asian or possibly European, so nobody was paying any attention to the City of Angels."

"LA?"

Buffy admitted wryly, "There's probably some cosmic irony in the fact that I was born and raised right here in LA. My parents' marriage had been going down the tubes for years and having to move to some nonentity suburb like Sunnydale when I burnt down my old school gym was the final straw."

"That must have been...indescribable." Nina conceded.

"That's one word for it." Buffy snorted at the memory. "Three days past my Sweet Sixteenth and there's me, Buffy Anne Summers, a full-on representative of the 'Alicia Silverstone in _Clueless_' set: sat on the steps of my High School eating an ice cream and contemplating the choice between Pink Diamonds and Sensuous Scarlet nail polish, when this middle-aged fat guy in a bad suit with worse hair suddenly walks right up to me, sweating anti-socially, and tells me I have to come with him to fight the vampires."

"Seriously?"

"As it turned out, yes. Within forty-eight hours I was up to my…pertinent parts in the undead and angry, with Merrick – he was a Watcher - giving me the cliff notes on all things Slayer, comma, The. That led to gymnasium-related arson and my parents, who thought I was finally 'acting out' due to their slow-motion marital meltdown, relocated us to Sunnydale for a whole-family fresh start."

"That didn't take," it wasn't a question.

"My dad packed his backs and moved in with his secretary back here in Rosita less than a month after we got to Sunnydale. If I'm honest it was a relief after four solid weeks of my parents alternating freezing silences with boiling scream-fests; dad fondly imagined we hadn't twigged to his long-term on-off affair with his PA and it got very unpleasant when he tried to feed mom all this guff about how long he'd been cheating. But then I didn't help matters – we moved during the summer break, so I didn't meet Giles until I started at Sunnydale High in the fall, nearly three months after the move. I was stuck here in Sunnydale with nobody to talk to about what was really going on."

Nina raised her fingers tentatively. "What about…Merrick?"

Buffy's expression took on a sadness that even after only a short acquaintance with Angel's circle, Nina instantly recognised as boding nothing good. "Merrick told me he'd follow in a few days. He never showed up…I was so furious at him abandoning me. There is no creature more self-involved and egocentric than a teenager nursing an imagined grievance. I found out, two days before Dad bugged out back to Rosita, that Merrick had killed himself."

For a moment Nina could only blink; she'd been expecting murder, not suicide.

"He was captured by a vampire wanting to track down the new – and therefore green and easy pickings – Slayer, i.e., me. Rather than let himself be turned into a vampire and lead his captor to me, Merrick somehow got loose and staked himself in the heart." Buffy paused for a moment, then spoke reflectively, "I don't think I've ever hated myself as much since, no matter what, as I did at that moment when I found out what had happened to Merrick, because I wasn't there – and I'd spent three weeks calling him every name under the sun. And, of course, a part of me also hated my mom and dad, because if they hadn't insisted on moving to Sunnydale – over my ferocious objections – I _would _have been there to save him."

Buffy gave a tiny shake of her head as if to clear away old ghosts. "I met Angel a couple of weeks after starting Sunnydale High and meeting Xander and Willow. For the next three years, Angel _was_ my sanity. I hated being the Slayer. Every single night I went out and fought monsters when all I wanted to do was stay in bed or better yet run away from it all. He gave me perspective, fought by my side, saved my friends. But we couldn't be together."

"Because of the bliss –"

"Because I was holding him back." Buffy corrected firmly. "Angel was and is far more than just one of the Slayer's sidekicks. People talk about Buffy Summers' Scooby Gang but all these people are far more than just my cheerleading squad. They are unique and talented heroes who I am privileged to have fight with me. Sometimes they've done a better job of being Champion than I have. To my knowledge, Xander Harris has saved the world twice without having any super-powers to fall back on."

"Wow. He's so gentle and modest."

"He's a hero," Buffy reinforced quietly, "and so are all my friends. Angel had his own destiny; he has the chance to achieve redemption, to be a human again. The pair of you may well one day be able to get married in a church and have kids and go to the beach at midday. I couldn't and I never would hold him back from that opportunity because that's what real love is all about, 'Love is not jealous, it does not brag, it does not get proud, it does not look for its own interests, it bears all things, endures all things. Love never fails.'"

"First Corinthians Chapter Thirteen verses Four to Eight." Nina smiled as she quoted the reference, "My dad was a Baptist minister."

"My granddad Cavendish – mom's dad – Methodist minister." Buffy smiled back. "But I screwed up big time, Nina. When Angel Sunnydale left for LA I was so determined that I was going to have someone 'normal': a man who was dependable and reliable and decent and normal, no more tortured heroes with the weight of the world on their shoulders for me."

"Why do I get the feeling that 'normal' and 'Slayer' don't work out so well together?"

"Smart girl. Riley Finn was a wonderful man, but we weren't right for each other. I'd shut down emotionally because of Angel. I was like a spoiled kid who wanted Riley to just be there whenever I wanted to play but then be able to take out his batteries and put him on a shelf when I had other things to do. It took Xander's slap upside the head – verbally not literally - to get me to see what I was doing, but by then he'd left." Buffy shrugged, "And although my pride still stings when I admit this, that was the best thing that could have happened - for _Riley_. He works for a covert government group, The Initiative, with his wife, Samantha, and his best friend - Graham Miller, Grey."

"The Army Captain downstairs?" Nina ventured hesitantly. "That Grey Miller?"

"That's him. Miller was a godsend in Sunnydale; most of the time you never noticed him, but he always had Riley's back and he's rock solid in a crisis. Their group, The Initiative, works with us and helps out quite a lot, especially with Slayer combat training."

Seeing Nina boggling slightly at the concept of a bunch of teenage girls going mano-a-girlo against a group of highly trained special-forces commandos, Buffy allowed herself a chuckle. "Yeah, picture the visual. Xander suggested it actually – the Slayers, especially the new…born ones, I guess…tend to be a bit too reliant on the fact that they're Human Plus – slightly more souped-up than most people – they do the hong-kong-phooey-chop-suey and expect the bad guy to go down with one blow. The commandos in turn tend to discount anyone who isn't built like Schwarzneggar and-stroke-or carting around a couple of grenade launchers as 'no threat', so getting their ass handed to them on a plate by a size zero fourteen year old who weighs 100 pounds sopping wet and carrying an anvil under each arm is a lesson that lingers in the memory. Both sides get some of their preconceptions knocked out of them."

"Can I ask…is there video footage?"

Buffy laughed out loud, "Now wouldn't that be a YouTube sensation? I don't think I'll mention that to Riley, though I suspect his wife, Sam, would be up for it. I've met her a couple of times, and their marriage is far happier than anything Riley and I had together or would ever have had, because what we had wasn't real. I had to face up to the fact that I'm not a normal person, I don't live in the normal world and a 'normal guy' would get eaten alive in five minutes in my world."

"So, you fell in love with Spike because he's abnormal." Nina nodded sagely with a straight face before she broke and began to giggle.

"You see - you're already good with the Scooby Gang quips!" praised Buffy, also chuckling. "You're a natural!"

She went on more seriously, "Truthfully, Spike is the one that _should_ have gotten away because I sure as hell didn't deserve to have him. The way I treated him…I had a treasure right under my nose but I couldn't see the wood for the trees. Even before Glory started trying to kill Dawn – other dimensional hell-god, blah blah - when my mom got sick, Spike was there, watching my back, clearing up my swathes of self-pitying destruction."

"He didn't have a soul though?"

"To be honest, the soul doesn't seem to have made that much difference," Buffy mused in momentary distraction as this thought occurred to her, "and I mean that in a good way," she assured Nina earnestly. "We had Glory after my sister Dawn, my mom was really sick and of course my dad wasn't even in the picture – he's been in Spain for the last few years, shacked up with his secretary, and apparently his daughters have been airbrushed from his history and his memory. I know it sounds crazy when I say it but Spike was a better parent to Dawn than my mom, or Giles, or me because while he made allowances for Dawn being the Key, he didn't let her or anyone else make it an _excuse_. Maybe that's why he was chosen as Dawn's Champion, because out of all us, Spike was the only one of us who looked at Dawn, and only saw Dawn."

"Whereas you all saw the Key besides," Nina acknowledged softly, wisely not asking for more detail on who – or what – Dawn Summers really was. "I get that – I do, really. I know you can't see anything now, but I was born with a minor facial defect, a slight cleft palate, I had to have an operation to fix it."

"Wow, and here I am moaning about having to put up with my parents arguing when I was a kid. Buffy the Shallow."

"Every family has its own problems; yours were just different, not less." Nina asserted firmly. "Anyway…my dad was killed in a train wreck when I was six and my mom married again and had a second family – I have four half-siblings."

"It wasn't a happy marriage?"

Nina shrugged. "Honestly I have no idea how my mom would answer that. She died several years ago from complications due to a heart condition. I mean, she and my dad adored each other, but she married my stepfather within two years of his death. Whether she did it to give Gill and me financial security rather than because she really wanted to, I don't know. Whether he suspected that…whatever the reason, my older sister and I didn't have a good relationship with our stepfather. Part of it was that our dad had been the most popular minister our church had had in years and he always felt that he was constantly being judged against a ghost."

"Death turns those we love in unassailable paragons of virtue," Buffy admitted, "without flaw or foible. The more time that passes since we lost them, the more we romanticise their memory."

"Oh yeah, my stepfather would agree with that. He always felt, and to be honest, probably with a lot of justification, that he was always being measured and found wanting against some impossible standard of worthiness. One of the ways in which he would strike back at us was to explain - in detail - to anyone who would listen exactly why my mom's house had plenty of baby photographs of my older sister, but why mine were all _after_ when I was four and the scar from my surgery had healed up. It's part of the reason why Gill is so over-protective. I've been normal for over twenty-five years, but whenever she looks at me, part of her still sees the cleft palate."

"That was our same mistake," confessed Buffy. "The problem was Dawn knew we were hiding something, but she didn't know what she was – and when she found out…She sneaked out of the house, broke into The Magic Box and read the truth in Giles' diary. I was so furious. I stormed into Spike's crypt prepared to dust him on the spot – and left with the world's biggest flea in my ear, which I richly deserved." Buffy admitted. "You know, I'd never seen Spike angry. Even now, looking back to the times when he was Evil, I can still count on one hand the times that Spike has ever been really _angry_. Him and Xander are so alike that way – they're both witty and insouciant and laid back – but if you provoke either of them into real rage then look out. Spike laid into me good, and he was right. I was blaming him when if we'd been honest with Dawn from the start…"

"_And _I bet you never thanked him for going across town with Dawn in the dark to make sure she was safe." Nina commented.

Buffy paused and glared at Nina with exaggerated suspicion. "You're way too smart, you know that?"

"It's a gift."

"But you're right, I didn't. The thing is, there were events, things that Spike and I shared, that Angel and I _didn't_ share, that he can't understand, or feel…

"And that makes a tremendous difference," Nina whispered. "I love Gill, she's my big sister, but she would never comprehend, never be able to _feel _what it's like to have to face the fact you're a fairytale monster through no fault of your own."

"Right. Even _without_ a soul, Spike fought with us and for us. The night my mom went into hospital for more tests that turned up the brain tumour, I sat on the back steps crying because my mom was sick and my little sister was really a mystical energy being that I had to protect from a deranged hell-god. Spike came and just sat beside me the whole night. No talking, no meaningless inanities, just sat there with me…Then while the rest of us were running around after Glory and my mom, Spike was caring for Dawn without any of us realising just how much work he was doing…I didn't know about it until long after my mom died, until after Spike was killed when we stopped the First Evil…but Spike visited her every day; me and Dawn and everyone were out most of the time, she and him both used to watch Passions –"

"I love that series." Nina said just a little defensively.

"Yeah, my mom too, and Spike, though I don't know how many more plausible reasons they can come up with for stuffing Timmy down the well…" Buffy smiled at the memories, "I had been furious with him, so I de-invited him from my house, but after mom came home from the hospital he used to throw a blanket over himself and sneak over in broad daylight, just to check she was okay through the window – and watch Passions. When mom spotted him and realised what he was doing she invited him in again and they used to sit there watching Passions and critiquing the plotlines… "

"But he never let on?"

"Didn't breathe a word, not a single syllable. In fact, when we were going to fight Glory, he and I went to my house to get the weapons chest, and he even pretended the de-invite barrier was still there and working so I wouldn't ask any questions," Buffy sighed. "The summer I was dead he protected them all. When I was resurrected he let _me_ use him as a punching bag and _them_ use him as a whipping boy until I finally pushed him too far. Then he came back to help us again against the First Evil and his courage got him burned alive. That's my biggest regret, you know. I was so full of denial and anger and resentment for so long that when I eventually got my head out of my ass and finally gathered enough courage to be honest with Spike about my feelings – he didn't believe me."

"I don't understand?"

"It's Spike's gift: perfect clarity. He sees through the bullshit and sophistry and the lies we protect ourselves with. He saw how destructive my relationship with Angel was long before either of us would admit it to each other or ourselves. When Willow resurrected me, Spike had a big fight with Xander outside our house because he'd fought alongside them all summer and they _hadn't_ told him…but he knew _why_…Spike knew that Willow knew there was a chance I'd come back wrong –"

"Zombie?" Breathed Nina, her eyes widening fearfully.

"Or worse – monster, demon, even something evil with my face, like…I suppose the way that 'Jasmine' must have hidden in Cordelia's body without her ever realising it was there till it was too late. It took Spike all of ten seconds to figure out that Willow kept him in the dark because _he_ was her failsafe plan, the only thing she had that was strong enough to get rid of 'me' or whatever came back if something went wrong…and in the instant he realised _that_, Spike saw Willow's addiction to magic coming like an out-of-control Mack truck...but he was Spike. Evil, vampire, beneath us, deserving only of our contempt, so we wouldn't listen…"

"…and I'm guessing there wasn't a happy ending."

"Hardly," Buffy sighed, "Then the First Evil hit on the idea of annihilating the entire Slayer line – kill the current generation of Potentials before they have any children. But Spike came back and helped when he had every right to do what we deserved and leave us be smothered by the almighty mess we'd made…he was the Champion…but when I was finally truthful…"

Nina didn't interrupt when the famous Slayer-Queen paused for a moment; she seriously doubted that Buffy Summers was ever this open and 'sharing' with anyone, never mind a love-rival she'd only met five minutes ago, relatively speaking. Buffy was clearly making an effort for Angel's sake, and Nina was wise enough to appreciate her effort and be grateful for it.

"When we stopped the First – Spike used the amulet to destroy the Turok-Han, harnessing the power of a yellow sun that burned him to death in agony even as it also destroyed _them_. He was standing there, his skin beginning to char, and I told him I loved him. He smiled at me and said, "'No you don't; but thanks for saying it.'" I had to run, the place was imploding, collapsing, but it hurt so much because…Spike was so used to me swinging back and forth like an emotional pendulum, so used to me being a virago one minute and sweet Little Miss the next, so used to me being duplicitous and manipulative that his gift failed him, because when I finally told him the truth, he didn't recognise it."

Buffy paused again and drew in a deep breath, "What I'm trying to say in my patented fashion of grandiose, waffling oratory is: Go For It. Both Angel and Spike mean the world to me, and I could never make such a choice, which is why we all have to move on to new places and new people, like I did with…in Rome…and like Angel did with Cordelia…You have to move forward, no matter how scary it is."

"I don't have a good record when it comes to guys," Nina admitted. "I really…care…about Angel, I'm just frightened that it'll go wrong."

"It very well might go wrong." Buffy agreed. "You're a werewolf, he's a vampire; he's a Champion of Light, you're Josephine Public; he's 250 going on 900 and you're not 25 years old yet. Luis Vuitton's entire collection of baggage doesn't even begin to cover it. Even if he gets the Big Reward of humanity, and you're still together at that point, you guys are never going to have a nice, neat nine-to-five existence with a little white picket fence. You might even discover that while you love each other, you're not _in_ love with each other, like my relationship with Riley just wasn't right for us. But, you've got to try. If you don't…some people live their lives in fear of dying, others with the joy of living. The former live dying, the latter die living. I spend ninety percent of my life scared to death."

"But you're the – a – Slayer." Nina pointed out.

"Big deal! Sure being Called gave me super-strength, but it didn't boost my IQ any! Were you listening, or have I been confessing my litany of screw-ups to myself for the last five minutes? Every decision we make has a fifty-fifty chance of turning out good or bad, but if we don't at least _try_ what use are we? And even then I'm still a big wuss compared to some of the people around here – like Faith."

"Faith – the Dark Slayer?" Nina looked puzzled.

"Faith is going to have a daughter, a Slayer daughter." Buffy told Nina. "Faith's childhood was a textbook example of how _not_ to bring up a child and Faith went through some bad stuff, but she came through it. She's got a partner, and she's going to have a family and she's trying her best to have a life in this crazy world. I don't know if I will ever have that much courage, but I'm never going to know if I just hide away inside my head, pining for the way things used to be, because I've learned that if you live in the past, you become trapped in the past, and then you're dead and gone, like the past is dead and gone."

Nina nodded solemnly, absorbing this wise advice, and then she smiled tentatively, "Okay, I get it - and coffee and chocolate it is. You promise to dish all the dirt on Angel?"

"Everything…" Buffy waggled her eyebrows suggestively. "Come on, let's go talk to Willow a bit – she's got more of the skinny on how Oz managed to control his wolf-thing."

Linking arms with Nina, Buffy steered them out of the kitchen, meeting Giles eyes challengingly as she swept past with the werewolf woman as he stood lurking nearby with Faith, Robin, Wesley and Illyria.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, B." Faith said quietly as Nina and Buffy started down the stairs.

Looking back over her shoulder, Buffy threw her sister Slayer a quick grin as she and Nina left, "Call 'em like I see 'em…mommy."

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 7_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

Chapter 7

Giles took his spectacles off and polished them on the edge of his jacket contemplatively, and after a moment Robin Wood gave a derisive snort, artificially loud in the uncomfortable silence. "Okay, okay, so Spike's a _bona fide_ Champion of Light. Well, he's never going to be on my list of babysitters."

"He has a soul." Wesley commented quietly, "And he fights for the Light, just like Angel."

"Yeah, well, excuse me if I find Angel's repentance considerably more convincing in its authenticity." Robin sniped.

"Why?" Illyria said suddenly from where she was standing in a corner, making them jump.

Robin eyed the blue-skinned, armoured demon warily but shrugged, "Various people have said already said it – Angel spent a century suffering infinite remorse; Spike was crazy in the school basement for all of two weeks and then 'got better' – doesn't exactly reassure me as to his sincerity."

"That's only because Spike's demon accepts his soul."

"What do you mean, Harmony?" Wesley demanded.

"Ah – did I say that out loud?" The blonde, having been passing by, froze and looked alarmed.

"Yes, now what did you mean?" Giles pressed her.

"Well, er…"

"I, too, wish to understand. Speak." Illyria ordered.

Wesley shot the demon a furtive look, wondering if he should draw Illyria to one side and ascertain what was going on – Illyria was more aggressive than Wesley had ever seen it, yet it had faced worse things; obviously Illyria was still disturbed by something and that made the demon doubly dangerous, increasingly it's unpredictability to terrifying proportions.

"It's just…look…okay: Liam, Angelus, Angel," Harmony ticked off on her fingers, "they're crammed into one body, but they're three distinct individuals, right?"

"Yes, we'd agree with that concept." Giles concurred.

"Well…Angelus doesn't _hate_ the soul the Gypsies cursed him with, because hate is just the flip side of love…Angelus _abhors_ the soul with every last atom of its very being." Harmony said earnestly, beginning to pace as she struggled to verbalise what she meant. "Angelus and Angel will _never_ be reconciled because of that, they are polar opposites – what you get _beyond_ polar opposites. But Spike…is _Spike_."

Someone cleared their throat off to one side, and Wesley turned to see Xander Harris and Dawn Summers standing to one side, the teenage girl giving Robin Wood a poisonous glare – it was clear where _her_ sympathies lay, not that there had ever been any doubt.

"I think I see where you're going with this," Xander encouraged Harmony, "but lay it out for us anyway."

Harmony drew in a breath, gulping now that she was the cynosure of their eyes. "I'm not saying Spike's demon is _happy_ about the soul or that, if it had a chance, it _wouldn't_ jettison it. I'm saying that Spike's demon doesn't really _mind it_ that much. I think…it finds it useful."

"Spike's demon finds the soul _useful_?" Robin gave a derisive snort. "Whatever you're on, cut the dosage in half!"

"No," Wesley cut in, "I think I see…go on, Harmony."

"Spike went through the demon trials to earn his soul, torture and stuff. Lots of torture," Harmony emphasised. "Do you really think his inner demon _couldn't_ have sabotaged his efforts if it had _really _wanted to? Can you imagine Angelus's reaction if Angel decided to go through the demon trials and get his soul made _permanent_ so he could go in for the hot sex again like other guys?"

"I don't know whether that's an option for Angel –" began Giles before stopping his own incipient lecture and gesturing Harmony to go on.

"The thing is, Spike has a _reputation_. All the 'big names' in…well, vampire-dom I guess, do. His reputation in his own right is well, wild, wherever he goes but above and beyond that is the baggage he carries with him, the expectations and perceptions others have of the one who is a grandson of _Angelus_. It's like celebrities, you know, Madonna and so on? They constantly have to reinvent themselves to stay at the top of the A-list because they're only as good as their last movie. It's exactly the same in the demon world."

Robin folded his arms and regarded Harmony with incredulity, "Are you trying to say that the demon likes the soul because it means it doesn't have to go around being all grrr arrrgh?"

Harmony shrugged, "Basically, yes. In the demon world, status is all-important, and some creatures have or had towering reputations, like The Master, Kakistos, The Prince of Lies, The Immortal, Count Dracula, Darla, Angelus and Spike. I've only been a vampire for a few years, but you would not _believe _the sheer number of vamps who go around claiming to be so old they were around at the Crucifixion, or those who claim to have been the last vampire Sired by The Master, or who claim to be the real Dracula, or the real Angelus…they're more common than slivers of the True Cross and just about as genuine. There are three vampires down in Rosita alone who all claim to be the genuine Darla."

"And Spike's soul relates to this how?" demanded Robin, still sceptically.

"Because it gives the demon the perfect excuse," Harmony pointed out. "Believe me, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to being expected to be a clone of a more famous family member, like everyone expects Madonna's daughter to be a musical genius and all that. Wherever he went, Spike was confronted with his own reputation and the expectations of everybody who knew who he was. Spike was more than just a Sireling of Mad Drusilla; he was the favourite child of Angelus's favourite child –without that ridiculous gothic 'e' or that stupid pronunciation. The infamous Spike, Angelus' favoured and favourite grandson, his prize pupil, his precious protégé, the only male vampire in the world who could – and more than once did - square up to Angelus and not end up dusted for his temerity. Spike could never go any place and be just another cute vampire with questionable hair styling, he had to live up to the reputation of _being_ Spike."

She gave them a moment to digest this concept, "But," Harmony raised a finger to emphasis her point, "the soul gives the demon the perfect get-out clause, just like Angel negates Angelus. Thanks to the soul, the demon has the perfect excuse for not creating mayhem and massacres wherever it goes. It can spend a quiet evening at home with a volume of Keats and a nice microwaved glass of AB Positive, because it can blame the lack of bloodlust on the soul. Sorry guys – can't rampage and slaughter anymore, I've got this pesky soul now!"

"Everyone knows the Roma cursed Angelus, and everyone _assumes_ Spike got hit with the same whammy." Giles stated in realisation. "Apart from the few of us, nobody knows that Spike _deliberately_ went out to get his soul back."

"Exactly. That's why the two weeks in the basement as opposed to a century of wallowing in self-flagging," Harmony answered.

"Self-flagellation," Giles murmured correctively.

"Whatever," Harmony dismissed the nomenclature with one wave of her hand, "What I mean is that Angel is a constantly at war - not just with the current Big Bad, but within himself. He is always fighting Angelus. Spike doesn't have that conflict, because, in a strange kind of way, Spike has always been Spike with a soul or without one, so the mental anguish and constant harassment that Angel endures isn't present with Spike."

"I have to admit, even when he was an evil, soulless monster, Spike was capable of feeling affection and devotion to others," Giles acknowledged with reluctant honesty, "which is a distinct anomaly in vampires. He was loyal to Angelus and faithful to Drusilla even when they were not…"

"Spike protected me and looked after me years before he had a soul." Dawn chimed in triumphantly with slight exaggeration, still maintaining her glare at them.

Giles frowned thoughtfully. "There was one occasion…long before Spike returned to Sunnydale permanently…he kidnapped Willow so she would perform a spell, he came to Buffy's house and tricked Joyce into inviting him in."

"It is in Fred's memory that the Slayer-Queen's mother died of cancer." Illyria interposed, "but the vampire would have slain her when it gained entry to her abode."

Seeing Dawn's flinch, Giles hurriedly went on, "That's rather my point, Illyria. Angel went by the house and saw Spike, but couldn't get in because that de-invite still held and Joyce believed Angel still to be evil. Spike taunted him by pretending to bite Joyce behind her back, but the point is that Spike _did not_ kill her. He quite happily sat in the Slayer's kitchen drinking hot chocolate with her mother for a good two hours and didn't lay a finger on her, which as textbook vampire behaviour goes, is about as abnormal as it gets."

"Well, I still –" Robin Wood got no further as the entire building suddenly shuddered, as if a giant had flicked it with his finger; pictures fell off walls, ornaments toppled and smashed.

"Hold that thought." Xander advised. "It's show-time."

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 8_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers

**Author's Note:**

A few years ago, I read on a forum where a fan asked for an explanation of the fact that Angel had spent a century enduring infinite remorse once he was cursed with his soul, whilst Spike spent two weeks in a basement. (In reality, of course, the scriptwriters didn't have time to put Spike through a hundred years of woe). The official response, and I can't remember who came up with it, was along the lines that Spike had only needed two weeks because he was a bit thick, and too stupid to feel anything in depth, including remorse.

I thought this was very insulting to an excellent character and to be honest, a fairly big continuity cock-up, since Spike demonstrated right from Season 2 of Buffy that he was extremely intelligent and a good strategist. He got one over on Angelus, and in Season 5 of Angel, is the only one with the wisdom (which is more than simply high intelligence) to see that 'you're in the belly of the beast, and you're so busy fighting phantoms you don't notice you're being devoured'; hardly the insight of an idiot.

The more I thought of ways to "fix" the two weeks versus century conundrum, it occurred to me that Spike was the unusual one in terms of the Buffyverse mythology. Angelus was a monster, but in terms of being a vampire, he was very average – The Master, The Prince of Lies, Kakistos, Angelus. He wasn't anything unique or different in terms of being a vampire, just evil on a big scale, the difference between, say, Ted Bundy and Adolf Hitler, their monstrosity being a matter of scale and opportunity to cause mass harm to innocents. But Spike was always different – even without a soul, he was capable of loving Drusilla. In flashbacks we see him showing loyalty and even consideration towards Angelus even despite extreme provocation from Angelus. It was as if Spike's demon hadn't quite managed to get rid of all William's humanity, as if a bit of his soul clung on and the demon either couldn't or chose not to oust it. In those terms, Spike would never have the same battle within himself that Angel does. For Angel, the soul sears and burns Angelus constantly, but Spike's demon doesn't even seem to notice it's there half the time.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

**Chapter 8**

_"AAAAGGGHHH!"_

_"AAAAGGGHHH!"_

"Aaagggh!"

"Aaagggh!"

"Agh-ah – I'm sorry, but you made me jump!" Connor didn't make the mistake of lowering the short sword he carried.

"Well you're pretty startling yourself, dude!" The other person said.

Adopting a less aggressive stance, Connor eyed the 'man' he had unexpectedly come upon as he crept through the garden around the deserted Summers' mansion, with Dawn, Buffy et al still being in LA. Tall and completely hairless with big, floppy pointed ears three times the size of a human's, the 'guy's' skin fell in wrinkled folds, giving him the appearance of a Bull Mastiff with severe mange.

"Anyway, what are you doing creeping around Dawn's house?" Connor seized the initiative again.

"Dawn's – hey," the guy smiled knowingly, "you're that kid Dawn likes."

"I'm not a ki- Dawn said she likes me?"

"You're Connor Whatshisname…and what are you doing creeping around Dawn's house? If you're stalking –"

"Stalking!" yelped Connor indignantly. "Do I look like that scuzzy Staavuz?" As he made this challenge, realisation hit, "You're a demon!"

"I prefer other-dimensional being," The demon said huffily, "and I'm a friend of the family."

Connor raised both eyebrows at this.

"I am too. I keep an eye out and my ear to the ground for Buffy when she needs help…hey, kid, _I _was invited to Buffy's birthday party…though technically Spike invited me…"

"Spike, Dawn's 'stepbrother'…the vampire." Connor lowered the sword. "So you're keeping an eye on the place?"

"Pretty much. I'm Clem." The demon held out his hand. "Clement."

Connor took it and they shook. "Connor Riley. I transferred to UC Sunnydale from Stanford."

"'Cause of Dawn."

"Pretty much. I saw…some stuff in LA…and apparently I have some enhanced abilities of my own so I thought…" Connor trailed off, prudently wary of giving too much information away – he was still having trouble 'processing' himself.

"With you, kid." Clem assured him. "That's a good attitude to have. Most people would just be out for what they could get if they had that kind of deal going for them. Your family's cool with it, huh?"

Connor shrugged. "I've always been different. My mom and dad know there are demons and…bad things…out there, and they're not comfortable with that world, but they understand why I feel I have to do something, like my dad said, the guy who stands by and lets bad things happen when he could do something about it is just as bad as the one doing the evil."

Clem nodded. "Your folks sound like solid people."

"Yeah…I'm lucky they picked me." Connor murmured to himself as he shoved the sword back into the scabbard he'd buckled around his waist.

"Picked you?"

"I'm adopted." Connor admitted. "But look, since you've been keeping an eye on the place, have you seen this guy –"

"Hewitt. Yep."

"Thank goodness." Connor blew out a breath. "I saw him breaking in a few days ago. He came up to me on campus, all smarmy, pretending to be one of the counsellors starting in the fall, but he's up to no good. I think he's after Dawn."

"You're absolutely right." Clem told him. "Hewitt isn't his real name, and he's no more a college counsellor than I'm the Pope. His name isn't Hewitt, either."

"You know what he's after?"

Clem looked grim. "He's an assassin."

_"What?"_

"Yep. Hired killer. Paid hitman." The demon said, moving his head back and forth rhythmically in what Connor was quickly realising was a habitual 'nodding dog' motion, which unfortunately only accentuated his resemblance to a bloodhound with severe mange; but Connor easily swallowed back the impulse to smile – Clem had had him from 'assassin', so he did the smart thing and listened to somebody more experienced than he was.

"He's usually hired by someone wanting to bump off a relative to get an inheritance, or avoid paying alimony for the rest of forever. His speciality is 'convenient accidents'," Clem made the ubiquitous quotation mark signs in the air with his fingers. "Always extremely plausible, of course. His victims don't end up with bullet holes or knife wounds; they fall down stairs, get fried by faulty kitchen appliances or fall asleep and drown in the bath."

"And he's after Dawn," breathed Connor. "No way is he getting anywhere near her." He looked at Clem. "Will you help me?"

"Damn sure I'll help you!" Clem exclaimed firmly. "Even aside from the fact that Spike would kill me slowly in unspeakable ways if I let anything happen to Little Bit, the Slayer and hers have been good to me. It's not easy to make it in this town, especially when I make people laugh rather than run screaming in terror."

"You made me scream." Connor reminded him.

"Yeah, I did." Clem brightened. "There's a bar near here, Slim Willie's – he relocated a week before Old Sunnydale went kaput down the crater. I'll buy you a drink and we can come up with a way to get rid of Hewitt?"

"Sure!" agreed Connor cheerfully, managing to stop a big grin spreading across his face; clearly the demon underworld didn't have the concept of carding and Clem was clearly clueless about the inconvenient practice. "So, you've been with Spike and Buffy and everyone when some hairy stuff went down?"

"Pretty much," Clem nodded again sagely, "The things I could tell you…"

"I'd be grateful if you would," Connor encouraged, "to be honest, I'm new to all this superhero bit. It's not as easy as it looks."

"You've got good reflexes and instincts," Clem praised as they began to make their way out of the shrubbery, "and you _didn't_ make the mistake of lowering your sword just because I comically look like a certain species of canine and therefore don't seem to be dangerous."

"Thanks," Connor preened.

"That's the most important lesson," Clem emphasised, "_you_ happen to know that Spike's a vampire, but nobody can tell that from just looking at him, which is why he's so terribly dangerous…on top of being a stone-cold killer of course. Spike told me this saying once by this English guy, Thackery, about…"

"'How great and widespread the delusion that just because something is beautiful, it therefore must also be good?'" Connor guessed.

"Exactly!" Clem nodded sharply. "You humans are lucky that for whatever reason, Spike chooses to give the suckers some warning of danger –"

"- like wasps and bees, or how poisonous insects always have the brightest colours - " Connor realised abruptly.

" – right, kid, you are smart. But think: change that radioactive-yellow hairstyle and the punk fashion preference for black leather and studs into a slicked down brunette in a business suit and Spike would be so inconspicuous you'd walk right past him in the street without ever realising how much terrible danger you were in, how close you were to a killer. Don't ever let your guard down just because something _looks_ about as lethal as a teddy bear. For example, look at this…"

"What?" Connor asked -

- just as the flesh of Clem's face opened out and snakes erupted –

_"AAAAAGGGGHHHH!"_

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 9_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

**Chapter 9**

With a derisive sneer, Spike folded his arms across his chest. "Well, they're getting zero points for subtlety."

To the accompaniment of spasms of shuddering through the building, sparks of 'lightning' arcing through the air and even a few miniature storm clouds booming and roiling around the ceiling tiles, swirling orange portals formed in the air before Angel's office, spinning faster and faster. Having lived – and died – through several Apocalypses Buffy was distinctly unimpressed, and equally experienced in 'The End is Nigh (Again)' situations, everyone else was wary but hardly terrified.

This time in long gowns of deep purple trimmed with scarlet thread, twenty-two assorted humans and demons appeared through the portals. Through the largest portal came Rutherford Sirk, his expression one of fury as he saw Wesley, and they saw how he held his arm stiffly by his side, testament to the damage Wesley had done when he shot him in the shoulder. Off to one side, three of the Oligarchs looked alarmed as Lorne and The Groosalug smiled at them, Lorne and Gru having reported to Angel that indeed, they were ex-priests of Pylea, having managed to escape that dimension when Cordelia killed the High Priest and ended his reign of terror.

Willow made a gesture and the overwrought pyrotechnics and atmospheric decoration disappeared instantly. Sirk glared at her, hissing softly in rage. Willow gave him a just-try-something glare, Kennedy standing next to her with a big axe and a please-try-something glare.

"You think that your little pet witch can defeat all of us?" hissed Sirk at Buffy. "Stupid girl."

"I think that Willow could defeat you if she were unconscious and deep frozen'," Buffy retorted confidently. "The fifty-odd Slayers, the three vampires, the unconquerable warrior, the two demons, the three Watchers, the werewolf, the electric superheroine, the Government super-soldier, the kick-your-ass fighters and the pissed-off carpenter standing all around you are only here because we're hoping that Willow will let us play."

"We will destroy you –"

"Excuse me," Nina raised an arm and waved slightly as she cut in on Sirk's imminent diatribe, "I booked a table at Ginelli's for eight. Could we take the macho posturing and criminal mastermind gloating as read and get on with kicking your asses?"

Spike snorted through his nose as several titters rippled around the room; Angel felt a surge of pride at Nina's cool demeanour, for his vampire hearing could tell how her heart was actually jack-hammering in her chest.

Sirk flushed an unbecoming shade of near-aubergine and Buffy instinctively tensed, knowing the Oligarchs were about to start –

"RUTHERFORD SIRK! STAND DOWN! SURRENDER NOW!"

"Bloody hell!" snarled Spike as men dressed in stereotypical special ops garb suddenly poured in from the stairwell, aiming MP5s at everyone, Oligarch or otherwise. "We're going to be here all day!"

Angel sighed as a small group of people in suits – four men and two women – moved forward from the Watchers' special-ops teams, their faces set in stern disapproval; he'd not really had much hope of keeping the Watchers out, but knowing how the Brits could waffle, this was liable to get tedious.

A tall, ascetic-looking man walked forward clearly in the lead, his lips compressed as he looked around him, at his side was a shorter, grey-haired man with a goatee beard and a distinctly grumpy expression who was instantly recognisable to Team Angel despite them never having met him, as the real original that Cyborg Roger had been created to imitate. Wesley exhaled softly from his position as his father glared around also with an expression of mingled disgust and anger.

"I don't remember inviting the Watchers to this party." Angel warned coldly, allowing some of his own dangerous nature to leak into his voice. "I think you should turn around and leave now."

"Be silent, Angelus." The ascetic man declaimed, "We don't take orders from vampire scum."

"Vampire scum?" Harmony jammed her hands on her hips furiously. "Can I eat him, boss?"

"Ah," Rupert Giles took off his spectacles and polished them vigorously on his jacket before replacing them on his nose, "Roger and Wilson, how unpleasant to see you both again."

Angel felt the tension coil within him; Giles looked as innocuous as ever, but somehow, without doing anything, he nevertheless abruptly now exuded an air of menace, an understated aura of carefully tamped down lethality, as if someone had flipped an invisible switch inside him from 'Stuffy Stutterer' to 'Sensible People Should Run Away And Hide Now'. Beside Angel, Spike smiled slightly, cruelly, his voice a mere whisper of sound as the blond vampire unconsciously murmured aloud, "Hello, Ripper, pet."

The ascetic man, Wilson, transferred his disgusted look to Giles, but addressed Sirk. "You will come with us. You will stand trial for treason –"

Sirk laughed aloud. "God, Wilson, I'd forgotten what a pompous ass you are! You always did love the sound of your own pontificating. I'm going to destroy these little Slayer twits, and then I think it's time for the Watchers to become history as well…"

_Spike! Get ready! The Watchers brought their weapons into the building from outside – they don't know that they're useless in here, but I bet Sirk remembered!_

Angel went rigid as he heard Willow's voice – inside his head? Telepathy? _Willow?_ He framed the word.

_Hi, Angel, you can hear me?_

_Loud and clear_, Angel thought. _Is that what Buffy meant when she said that you'd taken care of contacting Xander?_

_Yep,_ Willow admitted bashfully.

_How long…?_

_When we were fighting Glory_, Willow explained. _For me, Xander, Buffy and Giles…it's as easy as breathing – probably because we Joined to enable Buffy to destroy Adam…but it takes a bit of effort where everyone else is concerned. Hang on, let me fill everyone in…_Like a ripple effect, Angel saw person after person momentarily stiffen; even Illyria gave a single twitch.

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Barked Buffy Summers, making everyone jump. "I'll make this simple: any Oligarch who surrenders gets to live. Watchers – save the windbag speeches for someone who actually cares. Deal?"

For an instant everyone stared at her.

Then chaos erupted.

As one entity, the Watchers 'wetworks' team pulled the triggers on their MP5s to spray the entire area with a lethal swathe of bullets.

Nothing happened.

Simultaneously the Oligarchs hurled bolts of energy in a 360° arc at the Slayers, who made like gophers. Rona was hit by a blast and staggered back. Though the black woman was clearly alive, she dropped the huge broadsword she'd been holding, her Slayer powers obviously having been neutralised.

Wesley dove forward smoothly and took his father around the waist in a rugby tackle, sending them both crashing to the floor as an energy bolt blasted the wall behind where Roger had been. Buffy lunged and collided with the Oligarch demon who had fired at Rona, even as Willow both telepathically and literally bellowed, _"They can't blast us and maintain their protective shields!"_ Within seconds, a wild melée had erupted as those Watchers with magical powers added their whammy to the physical fighting.

Angel couldn't keep track of what everyone was doing – out of the corner of his eye he saw Wesley practically stuff his father protectively under a coffee table, while further ahead Charles Gunn was whirling a huge two-headed axe in his hand like the very reincarnation of Kwai Chang Caine from _Kung Fu_, deflecting the Oligarchs' energy bolts with the blade, and at Gunn's side Gwen had removed her white opera gloves and was laying her own special whammy on any Bad that came close enough.

Grey Miller, bless him, was clearly as cool under fire as Buffy had advertised, taking carefully aimed single shots at the demon Oligarchs in contrast to the Watchers' assassin squad, some of whom were still yanking at weapons that mercifully wouldn't work and allow them to fire indiscriminately into a group of mingled innocent and guilty. Charming people. Gru was awesome, which came as standard, and even Lorne seemed to be having a good time attacking the two Pylean Oligarchs with gusto.

Angel blocked a wild swing by one of the Watcher men, who was clearly panicking, and knocked the guy unconscious as he was just as likely to injure a good guy in his terrified frenzy, then shrugged and dove into the mayhem, fighting with merciless speed and aggression as only a vampire could.

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 10_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

**Chapter 10 **

Rutherford Sirk howled as the Watcher, Wilson, lunged and managed to grab the ex-Watcher by a leg, inadvertently deflecting Sirk's aim sufficiently enough so he missed Faith as she gave another Oligarch a serious drubbing.

"_Abominarchus!"_ Sirk roared, shaking off Wilson, but then clapped his hand over his mouth in obvious horror as if realising what he'd just said.

For a momentary pulse of a second, nothing happened.

With an awesome bellow, a trashcan next to the elevators writhed and expanded and elongated upwards and outwards into a gargantuan, shaggy biped with a big club, and massive tusks protruding out of it's jaws, whose head brushed the ceiling tiles as it twisted this way and that.

"A troll!" yelled Xander in warning as everyone made for cover.

"Bloody hell! No, it's an ogre!" Spike yelled warningly, grabbing Xander's arm and forcing him back as the young man hefted his preferred weaponry of an MP5 – one of those from the pile in Angel's office, similar to the ones that Robin Wood and Grey Miller had chosen.

Without super-powers but both possessing military experience – Robin's in the original Gulf War as a US Marine and Xander courtesy of Ethan Rayne's Halloween magic – the two men, like Miller, were both more competent with traditional weaponry over the Slayers' martial arts and sword/axe combinations.

"What difference does it make?" Xander demanded, but he obediently crouched down between the two vampires.

"Plenty!" barked Angel. "An ogre's got a thousand pound weight advantage over a troll and they're virtually indestructible! Plus -"

An Oligarch demon uttered a dreadful shriek as it failed to get it's protective shields back up; the ogre simply plucked it from where it floated in mid-air like the other Oligarchs as if on an invisible pedestal and bit it in half with a single chomp.

"They eat _anything _that moves." Spike finished for his grandsire.

"You idiot!" screeched another Oligarch at Sirk, "What the hell kind of booby trap is an ogre? Get rid of it!"

"I CAN'T!" screamed back Sirk in clear terror as he wiggled his fingers to reinforce his protective shields from the thing.

"OF COURSE YOU CAN'T, YOU TWIT!" Wesley's own impressive lung capacity sent his words echoing around the room clearly even in the din. "Because the booby traps you set when Angel and Spike were out of the way were a Doomsday failsafe you thought you'd never need to use, weren't they Sirk? And even if you ever _did_ have to activate them, you never intended to be within five miles of this building at the time!"

"WES'!" Angel gasped in relief as the Englishman nimbly dodged the ogre's attempted grab, the creature plucking up an easy chair instead and stuffing that into its maw and crunching down with teeth the size of headstones.

"What did you do?" yelled Wesley. "Sirk?"

The sorcerer moaned and looked about him, his eyes wild. Sirk's ego had never accepted and therefore never prepared for the possibility of anything going wrong with his grand master plan, and now it had, he wasn't able to think on his feet and implement damage control.

With an insane shriek, a ceiling fan morphed into a red-eyed pterodactyl with razor sharp teeth; thunderous bellows and mighty screams sounded from more distant parts of the building.

"Shit!" cursed Angel. "He must have transmogrified monsters and scattered them throughout the building!" He glared at Sirk; it was too dangerous to try and get the man, not with his hellish booby traps littering the place.

Ducking as the ogre swung at the attacking pterodactyl with the tree-trunk club, Angel yelled, "Everyone, get clear, NOW!"

Suddenly Spike dived from his position crouched by Angel's side and took down two Watcher soldiers who were about to dive into the far right elevator. "NOT the elevators you idiots!" roared Spike, grabbing one guy's useless MP5s and tossing it at the invitingly open doors – which snapped shut to reveal that that particular elevator had undergone a metamorphosis into a giant Venus fly-trap type thing suspiciously reminiscent of the flesh-eating plant in _Little Shop of Horrors_. A second later the blond vampire and the two soldiers ducked as the carnivorous horror spat the MP5 out at a rate of knots, hitting Wilson squarely in the back of the head and sending him crumpling to the floor.

High-pitched shrieks sounded as Dawn, Kennedy, Harmony and Faith dashed up to the upper level and collided with three women coming the other way.

Who really weren't women, as the fact that they had snakes for hair and mouths full of sharp pointed teeth amply testified. _Amply_ being the operative word: barely covered in diaphanous white gossamer gowns, the females were stark naked underneath and improbably – impossibly, in fact - voluptuous. Huge but pertly gravity-defying breasts strained against the translucent material, with perfect wasp-waists and long shapely legs tapering down from plump thighs and fat buttocks, like some soft-porn _Tomb Raider_ fantasy straight out of those _Sin City_ style graphic novels, written and 'drawn' by men with no understanding of how human physiology or the laws of bio-physics worked, namely that a real human woman would need to have a back as thick as an oak-tree and the musculature of an elephant in order to support such an awesome frontage.

Utterly ignoring the two Slayers, Harmony and the human girl as if they weren't there, the snake-women screeched and surged down the steps, the Watcher soldiers in their path taking to their heels as they at least clearly recognised what they were. Andrew Wells stood staring at them in frozen terror until Illyria grabbed him by the back of his trench coat collar and threw him across the room in Angel's direction, tilting its head and regarding the approaching horrors indifferently.

"Mah-mah-mah-mah." whimpered Andrew incoherently as he landed in a heap.

Rolling off the two Watcher soldiers he seemed to be using as a mattress, Spike hutched back next to Angel, grabbing Andrew and hauling him effortlessly into place next to him.

"Maenads, pet," the blond told the trainee Watcher, not unkindly, "ancient Greek monsters – they're wild women who tear human men to pieces and eat their flesh raw. Maenads are actually Ithric demons – they're only ever female. They mate with the man even as they're killing him to reproduce –" he stopped as Andrew's eyes rolled back into his head and he fainted.

_Willow, now!_

Hearing Buffy's telepathic cry, Angel looked up sharply just as Willow threw up her hands and screamed unintelligibly in a language Angel didn't understand. Instantly the ogre, pterodactyl and Maenads winked out of existence; racing forward, Buffy bounced of a couch and catapulted her body through the air, slamming both booted feet squarely into Rutherford Sirk's chest as he balanced on his invisible mid-air pedestal. Sorcerer and Slayer went crashing down, and Buffy subdued him by the simple process of punching him in the face several times, before dragging him upright and thrusting him at Giles, who caught him in a far from gentle grip as the few remaining Oligarchs abandoned the fight and teleported away.

_To be continued in Part 5 Chapter 11_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers 


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: _Please see Part 1 Chapter 1..._

SHADOWED SOULS Part 5

Chapter 11

"Who's hurt? Is everyone okay?" Buffy checked.

"I'm cool!" reassured Rona as she stood up and picked up the sword, her Slayer power apparently restored once Sirk's whammy had been stopped.

Everyone clambered up cautiously. Roger Wyndham-Pryce heaved himself out from under the table, brushing down his rumpled suit fastidiously, and the other Watchers scrambled to their feet shakily, Wilson laboriously clambering up and holding his bruised head.

"Where did you send the monsters?" asked Dawn, looking around her nervously.

"I teleported them…into the heart of the sun." Willow's already fair skin was snow white and drawn from her tremendous mystical output.

Assured that the damage was limited to bumps, bruises, cuts and grazes, Buffy slowly turned to glare at Rutherford Sirk, her attitude amping up the menace exponentially. Nobody was foolish enough to get between the Slayer and her target at times like this

"We'll take it from here." Roger Wyndham-Pryce declared crisply.

Except the Watchers, of course.

In a motion worryingly reminiscent of Illyria, Buffy turned her head and regarded Roger as if he were a bizarre curiosity. Angel's heart sank into his boots; Wesley and Buffy had already been on the verge of killing each other once before, now Roger was about to precipitate another confrontation between Angel's best friend and the woman he still loved –

"I don't think so." Giles said firmly. "The spectacular balls-up you've made of stopping Sirk has proven how criminally inept you are. I realise you don't care, but your staggering incompetence in failing to apprehend this scumbag resulted in the death of an eighteen-year-old girl that we were rather fond of."

"Rutherford Sirk was a Watcher; it was the Watcher's Creed he disgraced!" Wilson retorted furiously. "The Watchers should deal with him!"

"And they will!" Buffy Summers stepped forward.

Wilson's face flushed beetroot. "You? How dare you set yourself up as some kind of better Watchers, look at you," his face twisted into a sneer that made him look identical to Sirk's usual supercilious expression, "a pair of traitors…and that boy deviant…"

Andrew cringed at the loathing in Wilson's tone but then the growl of an angry lion echoed around them. Spike moved in front of the trainee Watcher, his fangs erupting from his gums and his eyes glowing hot sulphuric yellow. Wilson involuntarily took a step back.

Andrew blinked rapidly at this unexpected display and reached out a hand, laying it on Spike's arm. "It's okay, it's okay," he smirked at Wilson whose flush deepened.

"That's enough!" Roger Wyndham-Pryce snapped, moving forward to glare at Buffy in a manner probably designed to intimidate but which had no discernible effect. "We are the Watchers Council and have been for millennia. Rutherford Sirk is far too dangerous an individual to hand over to a bunch of malcontents and little girls with delusions of grandeur!"

Charles Gunn glared at the man, "You know, bro', I liked you better _after_ Wes' shot you to death."

About to launch into more speech, Roger stopped dead and stared him, flummoxed. "What?"

"An evil cyborg pretending to be you came to Wolfram & Hart," Harmony explained helpfully, "but we killed it."

"The facsimile of your form tried to steal away the Vampire With A Soul, Angel," Illyria suddenly loomed up to Roger, "and it threatened to kill both your male child and his beloved, the Fred-human whose body I inhabit, so my mate killed the one he thought to be his sire, to save them."

Roger gaped at her, clearly stunned.

"The death of a Slayer is never something we take lightly." One of the Watcher women stated nervously, moving forward to the centre of the group. "The protection of the Slayers is something that –"

"You abandoned centuries ago!"

Heads jerked up as a tall woman with a bad red-dye hair job leaned her arms on the balcony rails, looking down at them with smirking amusement. "Poor Wesley, quite a shock when I showed him the files."

"What files?" Shaking his head slightly as if to clear it, Roger Wyndham-Pryce threw his son a disturbed look but then moved forward determinedly, clearly intending to keep a grip on the situation.

Angel found he could feel a pang of faint sympathy – the man had just publicly discovered his own son had 'killed' him to protect the despised vampire, Angel.

"Who are you?" Roger's tone was probably intended to be a brisk demand, but Illyria, Gunn and Harmony had thrown him off his game and instead the pitch of his voice was more bewildered than bellicose.

She laughed, "I'm Justine, the Vampire Slayer."

Straightening up, the woman began to saunter down the steps, "And I probably know more about the Watchers than you do, Papa Pryce. I investigated the Watchers last year when I was tracking old Wes' there; I wheedled out all your little secrets and nasty little skeletons…before I cut your son's throat and left him to die."

Roger jerked his head to look at Wesley but the Englishman's features were impassive as he watched Justine.

Swinging her boot laconically as she sauntered down each step like she was the female lead in a Rogers & Hammerstein musical, Justine smirked at Roger, "But hey, he's not one to hold a grudge, my Watcher, are you, Wes'?" she asked rhetorically. "Point is, dad – can I call you that? Considering your son's my Watcher, I feel Mr Wyndham-Pryce is so stuffy, don't you?" she taunted. "Anyway, I found out that the Watchers have been very naughty little boys and girls. The Watchers betrayed the Slayers, tut-tut, such bad children…"

"What are you talking about?" rasped out Roger in a strained tone, just as Angel heard Spike mutter edgily under his breath, "Bollocks, the bloody woman makes Drusilla look rational," -an assessment the dark vampire had to agree with.

"The Cruciamentum, father." Wesley responded, his tone flat and empty and reluctant.

Justine clapped her hands together in front of her torso and swept the room with a mock-earnest look, like a kindergarten teacher telling a story to her nursery class. "You see, boys and girls, the Watchers were created _for_ the Slayers. To help, to nurture, to teach, to guide and to guard…_but_…somewhere along the line, they got _corrupted_. After Angel and Wesley returned from walking the Ghost Roads last night and let on about naughty Mr Sirk here, Mr Giles over there even commented how amazing it was that the Watchers had suffered so few bad apples considering how many millennia you have existed and the temptations and opportunities for power inherent in what you do, but he was _wrong_. The Watchers _were_ corrupted centuries ago."

Justine suddenly dropped her taunting faux-sweetness and her face and voice hardened, "The Watchers existed to serve the Slayer, _not_ the other way around, but eventually being a Watcher became an end in itself. The power of the Watchers was what mattered, the Watchers became the focus, and the Slayer was seen not just as expendable but as a inconvenient irritant that the Watchers had to endure."

"Young lady, I don't –" began Roger.

Continuing as if he hadn't uttered a sound, Justine went on, "But the Watchers had one final obstacle to overcome – the bond between _The_ Slayer and _her_ Watcher. Human beings are a gregarious species; solitude destroys us. Humans are capable of forming deep emotional attachments to inanimate objects that can never love us back, like cars and teddy bears, never mind sapient beings we can communicate with. The Slayer fought alone and in secret. No family, no friends, no life, no contact – "

"Except for her Watcher." Buffy Summers said flatly, eyeing the other Slayer with a distinct lack of liking. "We get it. So?"

"So the bond was forged as if in fire: Profound, deep, inviolable...and highly inconvenient. A potentially useful Watcher was ineffective and even a liability because he or she was devoted to his or her Slayer above the interests of the by-now hopelessly corrupted power-obsessed Watchers' Council. So, a couple of hundred years ago, some bright spark came up with the _Cruciamentum_, a nasty little party piece specifically designed for one purpose – to shatter the bond between the Slayer and her Watcher."

"Nonsense!" Roger Wyndham-Pryce snorted, looking down his nose at her – no mean feat considering she out-heighted him a good foot. "The Cruciamentum is a necessary test of the Slayer's worthiness and that is all. If there were any proof of what you allege then –"

"For God's sake, open your eyes, father!" Wesley suddenly snarled, making everyone jump and even Illyria twitch nervously. "There's plenty of proof – or there _was_, before Caleb blew our HQ to hell. You _know_ how the Board of Directors _love_ reports, father, you should since you are one. Haven't you _ever_ wondered _why_ the Cruciamentum is the only Watcher ritual that _doesn't_ have the statistics publicly disseminated?"

"How dare you address me in that manner, boy! That information is classified because it is sensitive –" Roger blustered

"That information is _suppressed_ because it proves Watchers have been complicit in the effective murder of Slayers for nearly three centuries," Justine Cooper claimed, "and if I were you, I'd be a little more careful about how you talk to my Watcher, pop."

"What you are saying is ludicrous." Roger declared. "The files are available to be looked at by anyone who needs to, and if there were anything in them –"

"Oh but I think there is." Spike chimed up, his bleach-blond hair gleaming under the lobby's overhead tube-lights. "At least, your boy _Wilson_ doesn't think this is ludicrous, not if the way his heart's jack-hammering and he's sweating like a pig in a heat wave is anything to go by. Since we seem to be having a little encounter session here, anything you want to share with the group, Wilson, mate? Don't be shy." Spike allowed his eyes to burn sulphur-yellow, and the partially retracted fangs erupted again.

Wilson's ruddy face lost its colour and he gulped convulsively as he became the cynosure of all eyes, most of the gazes very unfriendly. "I-I-I…"

"Wilson?" Roger looked at his colleague with growing suspicion.

"Go home, father." Wesley instructed harshly. "God forbid that you would ever _trust_ my word on the matter, so go home and look at the files for yourself, they will confirm what Justine showed _me_ a few days ago."

"Which is what, exactly?" Giles put in with clear exasperation. "While I abjure the Cruciamentum with every fibre of my being –"

"Twenty, Mr Giles, that's what, or part of it." Justine announced. "In order to shatter the bond between Slayer and Watcher for their own ends, the Watchers' Council voted by a majority of thirteen to eleven in favour, and thus introduced the _Cruciamentum_ in the Year of Our Lord 1753, a date of great significance that I'm sure most of us here recognise, but for the few that may not, 1753 is the year that Darla Sired Angelus."

"Er, Miss Psycho-Slayer?" Xander raised a hand, "You kinda lost me back there…could you dial down the sociopathy and concentrate on making sense?"

Quirking an eyebrow at Xander, Justine shrugged. "Sure, the Cliff Notes version goes like this: _before_ the Cruciamentum, the average age of a Slayer when Called was _twenty_ years old and the average age of a Slayer at death was…_forty-four_."

"No way!" Dawn was unable to censor this exclamation.

"Way, Little Bit." Justine contradicted. "In the Cruciamentum, the Watcher basically drugs his or her Slayer insensible then traps them, unarmed, in a hermetically sealed building with a powerful, drug-crazed vampire. Even if the Slayer does survive, the bond of complete trust, that absolute faith she has that her Watcher is the one being in the universe she can count on, is irrevocably shattered forever."

Roger shook his head, "Twenty to forty-four? Those ages have to be anomalous –"

"No, father, they only became so _after_ the Cruciamentum was introduced – I saw the reports." Wesley said flatly. "By the time the year 1800 rolled around the _average_ age of a Slayer when called had fallen from twenty to fourteen -"

"- Which the Watchers liked because a frightened, bewildered child is much easier to dominate and manipulate than a savvy young woman – " Justine put in snippily.

" – and the average age of a Slayer at death was eighteen years old." Wesley continued as if Justine hadn't spoken, "Less than two thirds the average age a Slayer used to survive to. _Before_ the Cruciamentum, a Slayer sometimes even outlived her Watcher who died of old age or illness. Assuming the Cruciamentum didn't kill the Slayer, the betrayal by the one person she trusted caused such psychological trauma that she rarely survived the week. Since 1753, over 98 percent of all Slayer deaths have occurred within five days of the Cruciamentum Ritual."

"The Slayer had no-one left she could believe in, so she just gave up." Justine told a visibly shocked Roger Wyndham-Pryce. "And if you want a recent example, just look at India Cohen, the Slayer before our Slayer Starlet there." She jabbed a thumb towards Buffy. "Cohen was killed at eighteen, fighting a Graathlar demon, three days after her Cruciamentum. She survived the ritual, barely, and her first words when she came out was that if her Watcher ever tried to venture anywhere near her again, she'd kill him on the spot, so she went after a Graathlar with insufficient weaponry and no back-up because the person she trusted to provide it had just betrayed her."

"You should remember India's Watcher, father," Wesley said coldly, "he was your favourite godson. I was at her funeral, remember…when they buried what little was left of her. I'm only surprised that Simon had sufficient integrity and honour left within himself to do the decent thing and blow his brains out a few days later."

Roger opened his mouth and closed it several times, but seemed unable to know what to say. Wesley, used to his father's almost supernatural ability to turn the tables and make even those in the right appear hopelessly wrong-footed, rather obviously savoured the moment.

"That is why we shall deal with Rutherford Sirk." Rupert Giles enunciated with icy rage dripping from every word. "You –"

Having been playing possum, Rutherford Sirk wildly wrenched himself free of Giles' grasp, somehow a short, rapier-type sword appearing from the folds of his garment as he sent Giles staggering back a couple of steps.

"Buffy!" screamed Dawn in fear.

The Slayers surged forward en masse instinctively to protect their queen, but Sirk wasn't there. With desperate cunning, he sprang _away_ from Buffy Summers, giving himself a vital second as they tried to correct.

With a classic duellist's lunge, Rutherford Sirk thrust forward and stabbed the rapier a full eight inches into Faith's abdomen, simultaneously flinging out his other arm, and roaring two words that were lost in the din as vampires and demons alike roared.

Angel literally screamed in fury as he tried to spring – but couldn't. Spike thrashed his head from side to side, bestial roars of fury ripping from his throat. It was as if the air in the room had suddenly taken on the consistency of blackstrap molasses, coagulated and sticky. Angel wasn't frozen in place, but moving forward was like trying to wade through thick, gluey sludge.

_"Injeka!"_ Rutherford Sirk cried out a further incantation desperately, his voice cracking, sweat pouring off him in such quantities it looked like he had just stepped out of a shower, but his voice rose in shrill triumph as he repeated, _"Injeka! INJEKA!"_

Every single hair on Angel's body stood upright as, like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, every Slayer in the room screamed in eerie unison, a concert of anguish and agony.

His body soaked in sweat, Robin Wood's face was twisted beyond recognition as he fought to reach Faith, but suddenly she slumped, impaled on the rapier, as a black vapour poured out of the wound created by the weapon, pulsing up the blade like thick, black smoke, coiling and seething around the handle before seeping down to the floor. Slayers crumpled silently to the floor as black vapour began to twist up in ribbons from their bodies, like mist rising, sliding past Faith like venomous Black Cobras, surging into the sword.

"Cobra Watcher," moaned Wesley in anguish, his face similarly contorted with the effort to move.

Even Illyria was trapped; the demon's face was a study in fury as it twisted on spot, seeking to free itself from the invisible shackles that impeded its progress, but Angel looked again at Wesley as the Englishman agitatedly muttered to himself.

"No…no…he's connected the Slayers to each other somehow, mystically linked them up like they're all on a giant circuit board…"

"Wes', what's he _doing?_" Angel cried to snap Wesley out of his rambling fugue as a black ribbon of vapour began to twist up from Buffy's head where she had fallen, arcing towards Sirk.

"He's using the rapier as a conduit and Faith as a funnel. Drawing the Slayers' power through the sword, draining them."

"Without their Slayer power –" Angel gasped, but got no further.

"He's killing them!" cried Roger Wyndham-Pryce, his face red with rage and futile exertion, "When a new Slayer is Called, she is imbued with the power of her predecessor, and when she falls, that power infuses the new Slayer! Once that power descends upon a girl, it soaks into every atom of her body; every cell is saturated with it. You cannot remove that power from a Slayer without killing her - that is why a Slayer remains a Slayer until she dies! Sirk, stop, I tell you, STOP!"

Turning his head slightly, Sirk saw Roger Wyndham-Pryce and he uttered a word that sent two ribbons of vapour surging towards the elderly Watcher, vapour that transformed into venomous cobras as they moved, hissing and spreading out their hoods in warning.

"Father!" cried Wesley in fear – and twisted to one side so he was between his father and the poisonous reptiles with such ease that he nearly overshot.

"BACK OFF! BACK OFF!" Xander bellowed in a good imitation of the ogre immediately as he saw what happened. "We can move freely as long as we don't try to go _towards_ Sirk!"

Those that could drew back – but the Slayers remained motionless.

"Buffy!" sobbed Dawn desperately, futilely tugging at her sister, trying to drag her backwards until Spike grabbed her and held her to him, his vastly superior strength rendering her struggles negligible until she stopped and instead clung to him weeping.

"A sharp weapon would be appreciated right now!" barked Wesley, staring at the snakes and making Roger move by the simple expedient of backing up into him and forcing him out of striking range. "Quickly!"

Angel threw Wesley a sabre, but even as Wesley snagged it, the two cobras suddenly coiled back in on themselves, twisting around each other and becoming vapour again before streaming up towards the ceiling. The black, oily vapour was now around Sirk's knees, and a tendril coiled up from the seething stew to link with the ex-snakes as at the same time, the black smoke surging up the rapier stopped advancing in mid-pulse, like someone had pressed pause on a VCR.

Sirk hissed with inchoate rage and shoved the blade deeper into Faith's body –

Or rather, tried to.

_To be concluded in Shadowed Souls Part 6_

© 2006 & 2010, The Cat's Whiskers


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